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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, i 

^ Chap. "H-S-R^-I^ 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 




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Tkere axe ^"i-52jL TOeke above tliy "waters "peepiag, 

And the -T^zei -wa.Tre sighs lieaiTX to th.e store; 
Yet many a foara-Tsxeatk o'ex their roTigh. sides cTeepiag, 

Ha.-ve toixcied iwith "beauty- -wKstt -waa dart Tsefore . ^ 

Tlie'WallkUl a.t ^'aldeiL, Fizfd SS . 



Daiia& Corapaay, 381Broaiiwa-y, HewTbrkL. 



LAYS OF A LIFETIME 



RECORD OF ONE DEPARTED 



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O suavis anima ! qualem te dicam bonam 
Antehac fuisse, tales cum sint reliqioiaB! 

Phaed. iii. 1. §. 









NEW YORK: 
DANA AND COMPANY, 381 BROADWAY. 

LONDON: 

SAMPSON LOW, SON AND COMPANY. 

1857. 



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Entered according to Act of Congress, in tlio year 1S50. 

By Dana and Company, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Sontliern District of 

New York. 




BlLLlN AND Brother, Stfreoli/pers. 
Geo. Russell and Company, Printers. 



CONTENTS OUTLINED. 



THE LAMP STILL BURNING. 

I'AOE 
rUEFATOKY WoRDS, ............. 7 

I. 

THE AERIE IN THE HILLS. 

Thk High Valley, its River and Cascade. The Dream that Brooded upon it. 

The Infant in the Aerie, ........ 12 

School-Days, from a Journal of Flowers, ..... 21 

Enigma, 29 

11. 

KATY-UID AND KATY-DIDN'T. 

The Dream Lifted. Lo I a Village Incubated ! 31 

Village Satires, 34 

III. 

THE LIKENESS OF THE INNER FACE. 

The perspective of the Soul within : — The Heart amid Home Scenes, . . 4S 

The Mother's Study, 50 

To A Dying Infant, 53 

The Mother's Prayer, 55 

By-and-By, 58 

The Thunder-Shower, 61 

IV. 

" THE ROCK, THE FALL, THE WOODED-WALK, THE RIVER." 

The next Inner View: — Home and Heart Embowered, 65 

The "Wallkill at Walden, 68 

The Sunset, 71 

Children in the Churchyard of St. , 77 



CONTENTS. 



HEAD AND HEART IMPROMPTU. 

The Vista still further : — Irs Atmosphere of Dreams. 
Keality breaking warmly through, 
To a Faded Flower, ..... 
Written in an offering of Bryant's Poems, 

To Nina, 

"1 ONCE HAD Friends, a Thousand Friends," . 
On a Blank-Leaf of a Volume of Sermons, 

To , ON Accepting a Gift, .... 

The Twilight Hour, ..... 
To A Young Friend 



Shadow and Light. 



On the Death of \V. H., . 

On the Death of Dr. S. C, of Walden, 

On the Death of the Infant son of E. G. S., 

On the Death of W. M. W., . 

On the De.\th-Bed of , 



79 
87 
89 
91 
93 
94 
95 
96 
98 

100 
103 
105 
107 
109 



VI. 

ECHOES OF FOOTSTEPS DEPARTING. 

The Golden Glory Bound- 



The Ending of the Vista: — ^The Overhanging Cloud. 
iNG IN the View, .... 
Sunday Evening, ...... 

Confirmation at Sr. . , .... 

The Christmas Green, . . . . . 

The Dream of M. F. G., . 

The Esquimau, ...... 

The Magdalen of Carlo Doloi, 

The Confirmation, ...... 

The Lenten Sabbath, 

Christmas Chant of the Wreath-gatherers, 
De.\to, 



Ill 

lis 

120 
123 
125 
127 
130 
134 
137 
141 
145 



vn. 

THE LAST OF ALL. 



The Parting at the Verge : — Eternity. 
Words over a Grave, 



147 
161 



TO SOPHIA 



Why should .we mourn thee, 
Gifted one ! thy lyre 
Gave the sweet echoes of thy soul's warm lay : 
Strings, such as angels sweep, the golden wire 
That vibrates to a Seraph's touch of fire ; 
The Holy, Holy, Song, 
Immortal lips prolong ; 
These were thy high aspirings, and thy robe of clay 
Bound but thy spirit-wings, which longed to soar away 



THE LAMP STILL BURNING. 



Every lifetime has its substance and its shadow. Its substance 
is itself, breathing, moving, and meditating in the world : its shadow 
is all of it that the world remembers, and cherishes when it has 
gone. There seem to be, as it were, two existences given to each 
person : one, a life amid realities ; the other, a life amid mem- 
ories. In the first, he is a motion, a consciousness, and a delight 
to himself as well as to others ; in the second, he is a motion, 
stilled ; a nature, breathless ; a mirrored likeness only, fixed on 
the bright plates of other minds, — the unconscious object of interest 
and attraction to them alone. Thus shall Ave all linger after our 
lifetime. As we are estimated and regarded now, as our life is 
strong, marked, and earnest, as its circumstances combine to give it 
prominence ; in other words, as it is memorable, so shall we be 
remembered. 

The simple incident of our birth alone, is, ,of itself, a surety that 
we shall leave a shadow behind us. Then the tender affinities of 
nature, the inseverable ties of blood, press and centre upon us. We 
are assigned at once a position in the intimate mosaic of relation- 
ship ; and when in time, one by one, we drop out, the sense of 



8 LAYS OF A LIFETIME. 

the liollow want lingers over the rest, till, at last, all have fallen 
away and given place to the beautiful connections of another gen- 
eration. This, if nothing else, is sure to commemorate us for a 
while ; but we all have, besides, more or less intrinsic power to 
perpetuate ourselves. This inward character can make the area of 
that shadow-lifetime almost boundless, and its length well nigh inter- 
minable. As it is strong, profound, impressive, and endearing, so 
will its memory be great, attractive, and complete. 

How powerfully some natui'es move and manifest themselves ! 
What a magnetism goes out from them, drawing around them heart 
after heart, and mind after mind, till they die amid a throng of 
votaries ! These are they that linger long after they are gone, but 
yet not forever. A lamp burns, not more from its flowing oil, than 
from its surrounding air. He who has impressed himself upon the 
hearts of his contemporaries only, will burn on, at fii'st brightly, 
but every year more dimly, as they " consume away," one after 
another, till, with the failing breath of the last of his age, he goes 
out into oblivion. 

How many a grand being, thus filled with inexhaustible oil, has 
so flamed awhile in the narrow chamber of its generation, and been 
too soon extinguished by the vacuum around it ! Unwritten minds 
cannot last forever. But they whose hearts have flowed forth into 
language, have not only an oil perennial, but an atmosphere as wide 
as the world. They have discovered the Rosicrucian secret ; for 
they have lit an ever-burning lamp. 

The intelligence that has sculptured into form its own inner life, 
has created for itself an imperishable personality, and one far nobler 
than the fading portraitures of memory and tradition. Mankind, 
in all ages, draw near to behold it. Their embrace is thrown 
around it. Their response to its expressive features warms them 
into life again ; its eyes brighten ; its mute lips speak ; the soul 



THE LAMP STILL BURNING. 9 

of genius mantles the face ; the spirit of thoughts that can never 
die, and of feelings that shall be ever felt, glows once more into a 
vivid presence, with a beauty surpassing the original from which it 
sprung. 

What an enchantment is this, that can keep a nature warm and 
living among distant generations ' What a magic is in the pen I 
It is the wand that touches the censer of the heart with inextin- 
guishable fire. The grand old Temple of Time is full of these ever- 
swinging censers ; and the long archways of its ages are fragrant 
with their incense. 

I have before me now a lifetime in its Days of Shadow, a de- 
parted nature moulded into living words, a heart flaming with rich 
odors, a Lamp still Burning. 

Say, that it is now nearly a score of years since she went away ; 
yet here are her beautifiil lineaments, all radiant before me. What 
matters it, that her form lies indistinguishable in the vault of her 
kindred : she is present still ! I see her coming down through the 
night of those by-gone years ; coming, and gathering beauty, as the 
home-annals of her lifetime strew her way like flowers ; coming, and 
gathering brightness amid the loving voices that still utter her name ; 
coming, and charming away the shadows as she comes ; coming, 
bodied forth, a true, positive, authentic nature, in vesture wrought 
from the glistening threads she spun from her bosom to be the 
golden retreat of her genius; coming over her "household hills;'' 
her eyes still brilliant with imagery collected there ; her step still 
slow and dreamy, as she lingers before the by-gone castas of her 
mind ; her pensive presence, and her lyric movement rehearsing the 
former graces of her heart. I hasten to unlock the household 
gate, and reveal her to all who will greet her and love her. 

How may I help to make her real ? How, but by showing forth 
these home-scenes amid which she dwelt. Let her shadow-lif' 



10 LAYS OF A LIFETIME. 

linger where her substance-life lived. The same incidents that 
surrounded and inspired her then, will now fill out and restore to 
the world her warm and distinct being. If I were to spread forth 
the minstrelsy of her soul, only as writ in the metred notes she 
left behind, their deepest meaning would remain unsung, without 
the lyre of circumstance on whose chords they were born. 

Well do I remember the fingers that swept those chords. Years 
ago, she appeared in the horizon of my childhood; and I can 
recollect looking up at her gracefi^il form, and catching the glance 
of her large, dark eye. She faded soon from my young day ; and 
yet, since then, around that memory a thousand memorials have 
gathered, and I see her shining, long before my time, in girlhood, 
fair, and bright, and loving ; then, as when I beheld her, in full 
womanhood, pensive, sensitive, impassioned, circled about and ener- 
gized by duty, receiving the fiery trials of the world, in her quiver- 
ing breast, yet still shining on, so sweetly, so religiously, apparently 
carolling away her sorrows, and, even in sequestered moments, turn- 
ing those harsh discords of the heart into the harmonies of verse. 

As she moves there with her noble form, her face almost trans- 
figured by the thoughts behind it ; her nature, so profound, so 
versatile, so earnest, so charming ; her career, touched often with 
romantic hues ; I feel tempted to dream of her as the beautiful 
personage of a romance. Indeed, were it in my power, I would 
eagerly seize the wide scope of a fiction as the most befitting sphere 
for her to move in before the world. Not that I would profane a 
single actual circumstance, by an alteration or an exaggeration : but 
I can picture her to myself, as assimilating most aptly with the air 
and movement of such a work ; kept modestly in shadow, only 
occasionally appearing, and then always to fascinate, while yet the 
whole plot and the chief attraction was centred in some purely ficti- 
tious character. Gladly, I say, would I seize such an opportunity, 



THE LAMP STILL BURNING. 11 

if it were within mj reach, of introducing the actual scenes and 
occasions that inspired her verses, in order to flash them here and 
there across the progress of the stQry. I feel, that, even in the 
blaze of a dominant interest, she would not pale, and, moreover, 
that many things might be told in such a connection, Avhich would 
otherwise be Avithheld as too sacred. They could be, then, so min- 
gled with surrounding fable, as to baffle and tantalize all conjecture, 
as to what was real and what imaginary. 

In the absence of such a fellowship, I diffidently proceed to speak 
of her, alone ; but, as far as possible, still in shadow, shorn of 
much romantic incident, and severed from many associations that 
Avould have made her real and beautiful to those who will seek to 
know her. Sitting here, with time-stained papers scattered upon 
my table, with a many-voiced tradition whispering its memories, 
with the jewels of her mind lying clustered before me, embarrassed 
with difficulties of delicacy, and the paucity of available material, I 
can only try to interlace the modest tissues of her history, and 
adorn it Avith the embroidery woven by herself. 

Sweet Dreamer ! long gone to her slumber ! she is still here in 
her shadow-life, moving in the shining robes of her poesy ! Sweet 
Slumberer ! I see her, as if come from the shadow-couches of the 
other world, walking in her dreams on the cliiFs of the Wallkill, 
amid the music of its falling waters, Avalking on earth, and yet 
under the glories of heaven, waiting for her Lord, her lamp sfiJl 
burning. 



THE AERIE IN THE HILLS. 



This is the Age of Magic, when the great powers of nature are 
summoned, like the genii, from their secret habitations, and made 
to do the bidding of man ; when the merchant, disregarding time 
and space, like prince Houssain in the Arabian tale stepping upon 
his enchanted carpet, wings his enterprise with his wish, and trans- 
ports his fortunes unto the uttermost parts of the earth ; when another 
dreams of cities rising in the wilderness, and lo ! they have sprung 
up, rich with merchandise, and thronged with inhabitants, almost in 
a single night. It was but yesterday, that the world had never seen 
all this ; but, since then, there has been a leap as of a thousand 
years. We are prone to look curiously into those days, not of old, 
but of a scarcely extinct generation, as if they belonged to a primi- 
tive condition of the race. And yet we appreciate them too. Our 
gaze lingers over them with a kind of filial sentiment. We feel 
interested in those antique schemes of wealth, and are astonished, 
often, at their vastness and success. But, although really close by, 
they are severed from us so completely by their obsolete forms and 
usages, that they seem already to be melting into the past ; even 



THE AERIE IN THE HILLS. 13 

now appearing in picturesque aspects, and with the haze of a sort 
of romance drooping around them. 

It is such an enterprise, chiefly remarkable because conceived in 
the early years of the present century, Avhose picturesque and ro- 
mantic incidents gather around the brief and fragmentary story I 
have to tell. Its projector was a merchant of energy, spirit, and 
great business talents, engaged in a pi'osperous trade with the Indies. 
A man of high and punctilious honor in all his dealings, he yet 
contrived to have a free, liberal, and generous mode of doing every 
thing. A disposition to enlarge and idealize whatever he undertook, 
characterized him throughout. He could not endure a small or con- 
tracted idea. Indeed, the only way by which he seemed to recon- 
cile his peculiarly broad, generalizing, and imaginative intellect, to 
a mercantile life, was by habitually investing it with such relations 
and associations, as would have made it engaging to any one of a 
semi-poetic-, semi-philosophic turn of mind. He was the very one 
to originate a brave and an advanced thought, and the very one to 
execute it. This, to which I allude, changed the whole tenor of 
his life, leading him gladly out of the maze and snarl of city 
traffic. 

He was spending a summer among the Highlands of the Hudson. 
One day, he and his wife were induced to prolong their usual drive, 
in order to visit a region back in the country, of whose beautiful 
scenery they had frequently heard. The road led them into a high 
valley, nearly a thousand feet above the Hudson, through which 
flowed a young and rapid river, hastening northward to its outlet 
many miles away. From this point, they could see the long, rolling 
forms of mountains recumbent against the horizon, looming, all around 
them, through the blue-tinted spaces of the atmosphere, and shutting 
them in on every side as with huge purple walls. The river, at their 
feet, had wandered from its unfailing springs in a neighboring state. 



14 LAYS OF A LIFETIME. 

streaming broadly through meadow and valley, when here it ap- 
proached the edge of a rocky height, and plunged downward into a 
gorge, washing away earth and stones in its thundering descent, and 
dashing furiously between its severed cliffs ; but, before it wound out 
of sight, subsiding into the same quiet and rippling current it was 
before. 

The roar of these falls filled the air. The hills and vales that 
sloped for miles down hither, from the east and west, were crowned 
with thick forests, and interspaced with areas of the gi'eenest vege- 
tation. Save here and there the smoke of a farmhouse in the dis- 
tance, the vast region seemed well nigh uninhabited ; and, near by, 
there was no sign of human presence, but a mill nestling at the 
very foot of the falls, shaking in its thunders, and, further down 
the stream, on the edge of one of its steep declivities, a cottage, 
almost buried in a grove of locusts. 

It may be imagined, how keenly the merchant and his wife en- 
joyed this scene, as it burst upon them. But, the mind that 
had been so long sharpened and disciplined by the exigencies of 
commerce, till every instinct was alert for a business opportunity, 
could not avoid its intuitions here. Whilst she in ecstasy pointed 
out the diversified loveliness of the landscape before her, he was 
gazing beyond, at what in the course of time Avould be forthcom- 
mg to change it. This solitude would be thronged with a busy 
population. Although these wild beauties might be dimmed and 
marred, yet the rude utilities of the day would inevitably intrude 
upon them ; for, no such power as was concentred in that un- 
tamed waterfall, could long remain unknown and unenslaved. The 
free waters bounding so jubilantly down those shelving rocks, would 
be turned aside into sluo-ffish canals, and made to fall on revolvino; 
wheels. Many- windowed factories would be abutted against the abrupt 
sides of the winding river ; and the green slopes above, be inter- 



THE AERIE IN THE HILLS. 15 

sectecl by graded streets, and covered with the dwellings of a thriv- 
ing communitj. 

Strange must it have been to the simpler instincts of the wife, 
to hear such a prophecy ; but no sooner was it uttered^ than its ful- 
filment seemed as sure as that .thoae floods resounded. It was a 
dream, but of one accustomed to dream of what might be. The 
idea from that moment filled his soul. He resolved to bear out his 
own prediction, and immediately himself to undertake what, if al- 
lowed to remain, would certainly be attempted by some one else. 
No sooner had he made up his mind, than he set about it. The 
moment he was able to do so, he closed his flourishing business in 
the city, and removed thither. He purchased extensive tracts on 
both sides of the river, making the falls the centre of the estate, as 
it was to be the vitalizing nucleus of the enterprise ; and, with every 
energy and resource he could command, he entered upon his task. 

Since then, he has passed away ; and I have around me the vari- 
ous documents which tell the history of the succeeding years, and 
am therefore familiar with the rare motives that led him to cling to 
his purpose, as long as life lasted. In a commercial point of view, 
it promised him a flood of wealth, as perennial as the fiills. As 
an enterprise, it was attended with hazard and difficulty enough to 
stimulate his courageous and persistent spirit ; as a conception, it 
reached fui'ther than mere riches or excitement, into never-ending 
aspects and incidents, most engaging to his imagination, and kindling 
to his heart. In the papers before me, I find all the evidences of his 
delight in it, as something to construct and adorn. Maps, showing 
streets liberally laid out, and broad parcels of land appropriated 
to purposes that could in no way have been turned to gain ; sketches 
of churches and glebes ; plans for schools, and innumerable other 
improvements ; all lying together, the relics of the life-long dream 
of a lofty and generous mind. 



16 LAYS OF A LIFETIME. 

So he went there to live, while yet the waterfall flowed in un- 
trammelled beauty, while the foliaged river-banks remained in the 
i-ugged shapes into which the waters had worn them, while the 
Avooded hills and verdant valleys la}- still in their native Avildness. 
His lovely and brilliant wife also left her refined circle, to follow 
him. He fitted up the cottage among the locusts for a dwelling ; 
and she tm-ned it into a home. Of her I would draw no fiincy 
pictm-e, but tell Avhat was told to me. She was attractive beyond 
the most of her sex. In person, tall and graceful, she walked the 
queen. A kind of enchantment seemed to surround her footsteps ; 
and the wit and witchery of her tongue had made her the delight 
of many a social horn-. And now, in the wintry days (') of her 
husband's weariness and anxiety, the fii-e of that cottage hearth- 
stone was not more warm and bright than she ; and those summer 
hills, cheerful as was their bloom, did not equal the beauty she 
threw over his household, in its seasons of promise and prosperity. 

Such were the parents of Sophia ; and such was the environ- 
ment they had put aroimd her. She was one of their four fair 
daughters ; and of them all displayed the most their prominent 
characteristics, and was most susceptible to the natural influences 
amid which they had placed her. Some natures stand alone from 
the very first, apparently underived; but hers was curiously refer- 
able to the two antecedent natures from which she sprang. They 
seemed to reappear in her. Her soul was a rich monogram : their 
two characters abbreviated and interwoven into one; a throbbing, 
inventive brain, and a glowing heart, intricately and rarely blended 
into the single, mystic idiosyncrasy, genius. 

To me it appears a most beautiful incident, that a poetess should 
be thus spiritually born. In the spectacle of her young being, it 
was marvellous to see the two natures convergent and flowiug; to- 
gether. The play of their features mingled expressively in her 



THE AERIE IN THE HILLS. 17 

countenance. Tlie imagination and practical ability of her. ftither 
came combined with the flashing wit and impassioned heart of her 
mother; and with the heritage of force, energy, and spirit derived 
from one, she received the fine form, and the lair, pensive lineaments 
of the other. But these peculiar auspices did not end here. As 
her soul was hereditary, so it was apposite to the scenes of her in- 
fancy. The very bias of mind and sentiment that had been paren- 
tally imparted to her, assimilated at once to the circumstances that 
had been the parental taste and choice; The same instincts that 
pervaded her being had, as it were, built her a nest, high up among 
the hills, where she was fii^st to flutter her pinions, and warble 
her earliest notes. 

These poetic situations of her birth and childhood, must be my 
apology for much that I have taken pains to relate. All the as- 
pects of her lifetime, and all its inspirations, were so clearly attrib- 
utable to her parents, and to the surroundings they had built for 
her, that she would have lost much of the finer interest that invests 
her, unless they had thus been mentioned. Indeed, it seemed to be 
a profane indiiFerence not to do so. I could not look back into the 
atmosphere of those dim years, and see the infant brood nestling 
within the precincts of so much beauty, and amid the foliage of so 
much love, without seeing also the parent natures hovering near, 
and feeling the suggestion of their presence, that it was they who 
had gathered those little ones there, and who were nurturing the 
first motions of their lives. 

The child thus prefigured as well as born, herself, in miniature, 
foreshadowed the woman. Many Avill remember the little fairy 
thing, with her long, curling hair, and beaming eyes, and glowing face, 
as she was wont to bound over the dew-wet lawn, frolicsome as 
the doe, her pet and playmate. And yet this was but the outward 
jihase of a character unusually deep and peculiar for one so 



18 LAYS OF A LIFETIME. 

young. She was often seen in quiet, pensive reverie, and even in 
playful moments, giving evidence of an intensely affectionate nature ; 
clinging to those she loved, yearning incessantly for their sym- 
pathy, and, more than once, when self-banished by some childish 
trouble, taking refuge before her reflection in the mirror, that 
"some one might be weeping with her." Behind all this again, 
lay the rich energy of a quick, impressible, and thoughtful intellect, 
which, being yet in its babyhood, unconsciously thirsted for and 
drank in the sentiment of things around her. 

A plantling, set thus amid such fertilizing scenes, she put forth 
the tender shoots of an unusual being. Long before it was sus- 
pected, her soul was covered with the buds of poesy ; each touched 
with the faint hues of her dawning fancy, and redolent with infant 
fragrance, but its little petals yet tightly closed. The other day, I 
found a few of these that, in the waimth of her vernal heart, had burst 
prematurely into bloom, and which had been eagerly preserved 
because of the promise that was in them of unfolding excellence. 

In searching among the papers of one now sometime departed, 
(the brother of her mother,) but well known in by-gone days of the 
political world, whose elegant culture and literary taste had been 
thrown around her girlhood, I found here and there, mingled with 
state documents, essays, and the correspondence of some of our 
nation's greatest men, letter after letter of hers, dated during her 
early years. It struck me as a most touching instance of amiable 
feeling, when I found these girlish epistles thus as carefully put 
away as papers that concerned the vital affairs of a long and active 
life. But I was still more touched, when I came at last to four 
or five of her first effusions, dated some time before the rest, as far 
back as her tenth year. Here they were, copied together on a sheet 
all worn and yellow with age. The trembling, uncertain child-hand, 
the little errors and erasures, the anxious carefulness of the rounded 



THE AERIE IN THE HILLS. 



19 



letters, with the few words of infant apology underneath, give an 
interest and authenticity to them which I cannot reproduce in print. 

Of one of them I have heard this family tradition: "Her gover- 
ness had given her little circle a question in arithmetic. Sophia. 
was so absorbed, as not to notice, that the slates were being collected, 
when hers was suddenly taken from the hand of the blushing little 
culprit. The surprise of her teacher equalled her own mortifica- 
tion, at finding not arithmetical numbers, but those of a different 
kind !" 

They personify the rose and the violet ; and expostulate with the 
latter for not bearing herself so proudly as the former ; and display 
that passionate love of flowers, and perception of an almost human 
language and analogy in natural objects, afterward so noticeable 
in her. 

I feel tempted to present one of the smallest in the tiny cluster, as 
it gives a curious insight into a baby imagination. It was suggested 
by what was the greatest event of her child-life. Another sister 
had made its appearance, — the youngest in the fair quartette. What 
an intense interest she took in the little stranger! There was no 
limit to her admiration and delight. Whether asleep or awake, out 
came the baby for exhibition : of her excitement on its account, 
there was no end night nor day. It is a common thing in a house- 
hold, to see one infant toddling about under the burden of another ; 
and we are led to wonder what the nature of the child's sentiment 
is. If any are still solicitous on this point, I can now gratify them 
by appending the few lines, in which Sophia's irrepressible impulse 
to record her emotions in words and imagery, has brought the mys- 
tery to light. Every verse, with all its crudity, reveals a curious 
phase of mind, especially the amusing, moralizing strain, and pre- 
ceptive dignity of the last two : 



20 LAYS OF A LIFETIME. 

" O, sweetest babe of heavenly bliss ! 
Thou art thy parents' future joy ; 
And thy fond sister's anxious wish 
Doth many a thought employ. 

•' Whilst kneeling at thy cradle, dear, 
My heart is always fill'd with thee, 
And list'ning to thy sweet complaints, 
Whilst thou art prattling on my knee. 

" Thou art, my dear, on life's wide stream, 
With many disappointments there; 
For life is nothing but a dream. 
And only an illusive snare. 

'' Seek to obtain fair virtue's cause. 

As on that stream you rise in love. 
Till Heav'n shall call thee to his laws 
To dwell in ecstasy above." 



The child developed into girlhood ; and here comes a school- 
episode in the city. I find these half-dozen years illuminated by 
her correspondence with him who so aflfectionately treasured up her 
childish verses. These letters are full of earnest feelings and grave 
aspirations, and even studies, that* scarcely any one would have sus- 
pected to exist in the bright, wild, wajAvard, lovely creature, as her 
companions only deemed her. The series is very incomplete ; but 
"I see allusions, now and then, to poems that had been enclosed, and 
trains of reflection pursued from letter to letter, where many connect- 
ing parts are missing. Still I can perceive, that it is a beautifiil 
spirit which unfolds itself in these worn, dimmed pages ; and, as T 



THE AERIE IN THE HILLS. 21 

read them, I am astonished at hearing, from other sources, accounts 
of a mischief-loving girl, always in pursuit of fun, sparkling Avith 
amusing traits, ever late at school and utterly defiant of its routine ; 
yet changing the frowns of her teacher into smiles, with her winning 
ways, and getting into favor in one quarter, without losing her popu- 
larity in another. She has herself given an entertaining sketch of 
one of these j^ranks, which, though written long after it took place, 
I may as well introduce here. 



SCHOOL DAYS. 

FROM A JOURNAL OF FLOWERS. 

" There are some faded rose-leaves on the first page of my 
journal, so much changed from their original beauty, that it would 
puzzle the herbalist to arrange the petals, or even to dignify them 
by name. Their bright color has long since departed, and the 
odorous spirit has vanished from its beautiful resting-place. I 
have used them, as characters to italicize a line in the dull history 
of a school-girl's hours ; and they are such faithful chroniclers, that 
if I were better read in the mysteries of the Pythagorean philos- 
ophy, and its ideal world, I would crave for them the same indul- 
gence that the believer in the sublime theory of the metempsy- 
chosis has awarded to souls. Flowers are amono; the brio;ht things 
of Paradise ; and why may not the fi-agrant spirit of these leaves, 
in its transmigratory state, be yet wandering over the rich gardens 
of ' the Fountain of Roses,' or sparklmg in the drop of ottar which 
the bright- eyed Persian consigns to the Haidees of her golden 
Sachnet ? 

'"There is some rust about every one at the beginning.' Mack- 
enzie has given it to his Man of Feeling ; and if we understand the 



22 LAYS OF A LIFETIME. 

sentiment, it is that yielding sensibility whicli corrodes and darkens 
under the ordinary influences of life ; which clings to us in youth, 
but which a feAv hard rubs with fortune is known to dissipate. I 
well remember, when the gloomy oxyd first stole over my sensi- 
bilities, fi-om a little cloud in the atmosphere of feeling that shadowed 
anticipation for a moment. I was a school-girl, and, as such, still 
occupied that obscure unregarded nook of life, which attracts but 
little attention, and from which we are pennitted the glorious privilege 
of the poet, to view society in the distance ; 'to peep at such a world,' 
and to invest it with all the pageantry of imagination. I had not 
climbed the rocky ' Hill of Science :' yet I stood quite high enough 
in my own good opinion. Friendship, sincerity, lasting attachments, 
and all the diversified scenery of the affections, were spread like a 
universe around me ; and though, it is true, in some of my friendly 
fields, thorns were already planted, and some of my ' eternal' attach- 
ments had already proclaimed their evanescence, yet the love I 
bore to my pen and paper hung, like an unclouded firmament, over 
a rough and treacherous world. I never shone there a star ; and 
my flashes were as harmless and unnoticed as those of a mid- 
summer's night ; looked upon for an instant, and as instantly for- 
gotten. ! how often have I wandered from my playmates, 
during the hour of intermission, to some lonely corner of our play- 
grounds, where, with my pencil and the leaf of some neglected 
writing-book, I have poured my whole soul, as I thought, on its 
blue-ruled page ; unmindful, while wandering through the long and 
sober avenue, that the bell had rung, and all was order and quiet 
again in our school-room, an 1 I a mere adjective belonging to 
school-books and my instructor. 

" Yet in spite of all the abstractions and mischances it drew 
around me, it once redeemed me from the anathema of stupidity. 
Few can imagine the utter scorn with which that 'mingled yarn of 



THE AERIE IN THE HILLS. ^3 

good and evil,' a school-class, regards the hapless individual em- 
phasized a dunce. I had always a strong antipathy to the name. 
Active faults have some redeeming colors ; but the neutral tint of 
stupidity even now appalls me. I remember the day well ; and a 
better day could not have been chosen to cloud one's hopes, and 
give the heart a little of that rust with which I commenced this chap- 
ter ; capricious and showery ; half sunshine and half gloom ; just 
such a day as will frolic with the nerves of the hypochondriac, and 
hang them, like Shakespeare's Sailor-boy, ' on the slippery clouds,' 
or toss them in a gale to 'teter' on a sunbeam. It was such a 
day, when I had gathered all the paraphernalia of rhetoric, belles 
lettres, etc., that crowd the requisitions of a boarding-school pro- 
spectus. I closed the front door, and went 'unwillingly to school.' 
! how presentiment flitted over my bosom with the clouds above 
me ! A mist hovered over nature, and wrapped me in its shroud. 
It seemed as if a universal sympathy bound me, for an instant, to 
all creation ; yet envy clung to the assimilation, like a worm to a 
rose-leaf; for every thing seemed happier than I. The little mil- 
liner girls passed me : they were free, and I envied them, with 
their band-boxes on their arms, and their cares all bound up in their 
ribbons. Trouble seemed to have left them, and to have run to me 
like a pet kitten. And I saw a SAveep perched like a blackbird 
on the chimney-top, and I even envied him. And why not? He 
had risen by hook and by crook ; but then he had reached the 
height of his ambition, and could laugh at the trammels that at 
first impeded his progress. 

"But I had reached my school. The long rows of bonnets and 
shawls that were slumbering on their pegs, and the perfect quietude 
that reigned among them, convinced me, that it was long past the 
hour that tolled the death of freedom. Every thing looked reproach- 
ful. The dark green wall frowned, the bonnets pouted, and the very 



24 LAYS OF A LIFETIME. 

knob of the door turned snappingly, as I entered. While making 
my congee, the buzz of a hundred voices rushed upon me : French 
rigmarole and orthography floated through the atmosphere, or flut- 
tered over the limhs of erudition, like so many wounded songsters. 
Large benches painted green, that ominous color, were ranged round 
the room ; and many a languid, living thought rested inert and un- 
employed on its mathematical line. In one corner, tall, gaunt, and 
toothless, sat the vicegerent, a second officer in our republic. 0, 
what ' a mighty little mind,' as they say in Richmond, was hers ! 
Its highest aspirations were bounded by a button-hole, and all she 
knew of ambition, nestled in a work-basket. She always occupied 
one corner in our school-room ; and her chair seemed to have be- 
longed to it. When I left her presence in the afternoon, and found 
her again in the same place in the morning, in the same costume, 
and with the same unaltered physiognomy, I used to wonder if she 
had been there ever since I left the room. Her favorites were gen- 
erally her carrier pigeons. But I, alas ! no darling, was never sent 
to the sanctum of her bed-room for her spectacles, nor had the 
envious distinction of adjusting her cushion. Sometimes, when en- 
tering the room with a most peculiar shuffle, (poor soul ! it was her 
own,) I have been stigmatized as the author of all the mischief that 
agitated our commonwealth. It was I who turned the blinds so often, 
to admit the air, and acquired so rapidly a movement she had taught 
my compeers, in an English quadrille, that it ever after aiFected 
my retreating footsteps. Although this reckless mirth made me ene- 
mies, there were a few laughter-loving spirits that clung closer to 
me, and liked me better for these very reproaches. 

" But, on this eventful morning, neither her prejudices nor her 
predilections disturbed or entered once into my speculations for the 
day. My anxieties were alone dependent on the master-spirit, the 
genius of our little world ; and now, even, from the distance of years, 



THE AERIE IN THE HILLS. 25 

would I waft a blessing on that gentle one, whose kindness fell alike 
on the understanding and the heart ; who, bj the influence of ex- 
ample, and the discipline of herself, trained each heart in ' the way 
it should go,' without any harsher appeal than to its own reason 
and affection. She was standing, when I entered, in the recess of 
a folding door, and my class, like the twelve signs of the zo- 
diac, were ranged around her. But the sign was in Libra, and 
the scales were poised, when I entered to be weighed and found 
wanting. A new theory had been started. When will theorists let 

the world alone ? It was urged on Mrs. , and she adopted it 

experimentally. Some judicious parent had suggested it, and begged 
the trial. Violent exercise of the memory, it was maintained, would 
increase its power. This might apply, where correspondent strength 
of mind required great exertion to develop a weight of intellect, 
that . called for a mighty grasp ; but as such is not the every day 
character of the human mind, the rule, of course, can only apply 
partially. A pigmy, in mind or body, can never be stretched 

beyond its altitude. Mrs. turned to me, in her affectionate 

manner : ' I will ask you a number of questions, my dear 
girl ; and without waiting a reply to each, I will require an 
answer to all, when I have finished, in the same order in which 
they were asked. Make the effort ; if you succeed, I shall be 
gratified, and you Avill be amply compensated by the improvement 
of your memory : 

' By what names are the secular kings of Hindostan known ? To 
whom do the Hindoos render homage? Where are the purest pearls 
found? Where the richest diamonds? And what curiosity do the 
Tartars boast of?' 

I was overwhelmed. All the questions I could have answered, 
singly ; but to remember the question to fit the answer, — and well 
I knew it must appear in no homespun dress, — required a mind like 



26 LAYS OF A LIFETIME. 

Napoleon's. The girls looked to me with an appealing expression. 

They had in vain essayed it. Mrs. fixed her dark eye on me, 

but I was silent. Again were the queries repeated, but all in vain. 
I could have answered the first and the last ; but the others were 
skipping round my mind, fi^rgetting their places, like so many city 
belles in a contra dance. Again other questions were put, with like 
numerical disappointment ; and now I refused even the effort, and, 
dispirited and offended, we sought our seats. My place in our class 
had often vacillated, and I in its opinion perhaps as often ; but if 
I had ever queened it, my transit fi-om a throne to a very common 
place in their heraldry, was as sudden as any despot's on record. 
One of the sweetest girls in the whole world, — the only one I could 
see above me in the class, and yet feel reconciled, — was deputed to 
ask the text for our next day's composition. It was asked and 
answered : ' What is the use of acquiring lessons, if you do not 

understand them?' No kind good-bye from Mrs. ; and, sad 

and spiritless, we returned to our homes. 

" The old proser may talk of school-day happiness, and the few 
anxieties that hover over that green spot of existence. He has been 
so long a wanderer over the rough paths of life, tossed by its vicissi- 
tudes, and bufieted by its sorrows, that he has forgotten the sensi- 
tiveness of his earlier nature. It is not that pilgrim grief that walks 
unsandalled over the burning desert of affliction ; but childhood, with 
its shoes off, will show less philosophy, and feel more acutely the 
pebbles of its play-ground. "Was it strange, then, that I passed a 
sleepless night, or strange that I penned, the next morning at day- 
light, the following commentary on her text ? I think the oft-quoted 
line of Pope must have had some influence with my muse, as I per- 
ceive she has introduced her remonstrance with a similar commence- 
ment. Perhaps I was thinking, that * twigs ' should not be crushed 
by superabundant weight, no matter how the ' tree ' is inclined. 



THE AERIE IN THE HILLS. 27 

" 'Tis education polishes the mind, 
And intellect's rude ore is thus refin'd ; 
Ere gems are found, their sepulchre is riv'n, 
And mind is delv'd, ere thought can flash to heav'n. 
If it be sweet, through science' path to stray. 
To gather fragrance for life's wintry day, 
Then why enclose with thorns each hallow'd flow'r, 
And grasping blossoms, bid us feel their pow'r ? 
O, who would win a wreath so dearly bought. 
And wound the spirit for a brighter thought 1 
Our wearied nature suppliant would ask 
Thy kindly aid, to smooth our thorny task. 
And beg of reason but this little boon, 
Ask each one question, let each answer one ; 
The brain tumultuous, in confusion toss'd. 
Thought leaves the helm, and Eeason's self is lost ; 
And Mem'ry flutters o'er the question-wave, 
And mourns the wreck she strove in vain to save. 

" Can we Golconda's diamond mines explore ? 
Then search for pearls near India's smiling shore? 
Then fancied homage to a Llama pay 1 
Kneel to a Boodh, or tremble 'neath 'Transfaf 
Or view the Bootern hills, with verdure dress'd ? 
Compare them with chill Thibet's snowy vest ? 
See Nature's table spread stupendous round. 
As if for giants rear'd, on Tartar ground ? 
Thought travels fast, but education's loom 
Must weave its vesture, ere it finds a doom ; 
Let Mem'ry bring again thy youthful days. 
When application gain'd its meed of praise ; 
When no entangling question stamp'd thee dunce, 
Nor brain nor tongue could answer ten at once ; 



28 LAYS OF A LIFETIME. 

And recollection will restore the smile, 
That cheers the languor of our mental toil. 
When that is hidden, clouds obscure our sky, 
And trembling show'rs are seen in ev'ry eye : 
The brightest star within our little sphere. 
This morning veil'd its brilliance in a tear ; 
O, then, in reason grant this little boon ; 
Ask each one question, — let each answer one! 

••' Homer won for himself a brilliant wreath, and leffc his poetry in 
the hearts of his hearers. For years, it had no other resting-place ; 
and all we enjoy of it was gathered from the bosoms of those who 
cherished it. Mine perished in a day ; but I, too, had my reward ; 
the renewal of our school liberties, and a kiss that was worth all the 
Olympic wreaths that ever were bestowed." 

The foregoing incident took place when she was only fourteen ; 
and, I need not add, occurred strictly as she relates it. The only 
alteration I have made in the lines, is in withholding the names of 
several of her classmates. Perhaps it may add to its interest, if I 
append the following, received from Mrs in reply : 

" Must I regard these lines as thine, 
And thou a vot'ry of the tuneful Nine ? 
Or, hast thou borrow'd what thou'st sent to me ? 
If so, such pilf ring must not, must not, be. 
But if thou'rt warm'd with sweet poetic fire. 
And thy young hand aspires to strike the lyre. 
O touch but seldom, 'tis enchanted ground. 
On which we tread while music wakes around.'' 



THE AERIE IN THE HILLS. 29 



ENIGMA. 



WRITTEN AT THE AGE OF FIFTEEN. 



To joy I'm a stranger, to sorrow unknown, 

Though I mingle in mil'th, yet mis'ry's my home ; 

In happiness dwell, am forever in pain. 

And never in tears, though I ne'er cease to complain ; 

Affection may claim me her vot'ry from birth, 

And friendship adopt me, though not of this earth ; 

I am foster'd by malice and nurtur'd by pride. 

And to virtue and villainy ever allied; 

Yet a thought that was grov'lling I never could trace, 

Nor dream of a deed that was dastard or base ; 

I am part of the sigh that breathes woe or breathes love. 

And part of the spirit that wafts it above ; 

I dwell with the maniac, in his griefs bear a part, 

And am wreath'd with the smiles that encircle his heart. 

Where wit is I am, and without me 'tis naught, 

'Twould signify nothing, no, nothing of thought; 

In spleen never was, in retort find no charm. 

Though in satire I'am harsh, yet am not known to harm ; 

In a passion each day I may have been seen. 

Yet twice in a passion I never have been : 

An aerial being, on the winds I am tost, 

In fire I exist, but in water am lost : 

Though my dark form is wreath'd in the shadows of night. 

I spring with the morning and sunshine to light ; 



30 LAYS OF A LIFETIME. 

Or, chaining the whirlwind as though it were mirth, 

I flash in the lightning and vanish from earth; 

To the world I'm a stranger, though always in view, 

And with all minds conversant, though never with you ; 

Celestial by night, yet to heaven unknown, 

Terrestrial by birth, though the earth's not my home, 

A prey to ambition, a stranger to fame, 

Ask the egotist quickly, he best knows my name. 



II. 



KATY-DID AND KATY-DIDN'T. 



Meantime the dream had- become real. A thriving, busy little 
town had displaced the wilder beauties of the vale, and tamed 
the country round. The spinning-wheels were no longer seen 
turning before the doors of the rude farm-houses in the neigh- 
borhood, but thousands of spindles now whirled dizzily, in tall 
factories built against the steep declivities of the river. Under 
the auspices of an incorporated company, every thing teemed with 
promise and prosperity. As predicted, the free waterfall had 
been confined, and enslaved. From the cedar-crowned heights 
that overhung it on one side, might be seen a canal, hewn out 
of the opposite rocky cliff, carrying a sluggish stream high up 
in the air along its brow, m strange contrast to the sparklmg 
rapids that still foamed and eddied in the gorge beneath. Back 
of this, groups of stores and dwellings covered the broad, irreg- 
ular slope, which stretched from the heights about the Falls 
downward to the meadow banks below. Never was village more 
beautiful, nor more picturesque. The land lay so peculiarly, that, 
pJthough thick with foliage, not a house nor church-spire was hid- 



32 LAYS OF A LIFETIME. 

den ; nor could one be built, without its wliite walls, shimng con- 
spicuously tlirough the green, wherever the spectator might stand. 
In the back-ground of these again, on the eminences that over- 
looked the high valley, and bounding in the scene, were the seats 
of the gentlemen capitalists who had come to reside there. 

The whole place shook with enterprise. The spirit of the Falls 
appeared to have entered the people, and the missing reverberations 
of their now subdued roar, seemed to have returned in the music 
of the pealing bells that rung the hours of labor, and in the 
machinery clattering through the live-long day. 

There were other signs of life. From this point, three physi- 
cians set out daily, in their gigs, to desolate the country round I 
And here also, "two infant lawyers and an old one," promoted 
a legal and equivocal harmony, with a success satisfactory to 
their ideas of a livelihood. Of course the village was ever growl- 
ing at the changes in the political atmosphere, for its very life- 
blood was a water-power, and all its stamina lay in a tariff. 
Singular enough, the "Doctor's Office," on whose shelves stood the 
whole pharmacopoeia in phials, was the constant resort of those 
who would save the "body politic." Here, around the fount 
where trickled the waters of health, and where the everlasting 
spray of gossip flew about, the ^-illage magnates met daily in noisy 
conclave, and squeezed all the questions before Congress into that 
tiny apartment, as easily, as the doctor rolled all the ingi-edients 
of a blue mass into a single pill. 

But there was an Upper House, where these questions received 
a more formal consideration. A society met weekly in the ball- 
room of the Hotel ; and there these same big-sounding tongues 
softened their uproar, and straitened their arguments into the 
solemn oratory of debate. The great whirlpool of public affairs, 
found this little corner on its outer edge, and eddied quite as im- 



KATY-DID AND KATY-DIDN't. 33- 

portantly hei'e, as it boiled about in wider circuits. Last of all, 
sure token of prosperity, — crest on the wave of success, — was a 
newspaper ! " The Republican Banner," flung its folds to the 
breeze. Its editor, " Crito," as he styled himself, bore it bravely 
and prosily in all seasons ; in time of peace, marshalling under 
it the awkward squad of "local items," and in time of war, wav- 
ing it vigorously over the fierce battles at the polls. 

These were blooming days ; and Sophia bloomed into woman- 
hood with them. I hardly know how to picture her now. As 
she enters the world, her connections and associations multiply, 
and her expanding nature becomes so blended with them, that I 
can scarcely describe her, without describing some one else. But 
though thus obliged to remove many a light which shines upon 
her, and to keep her more in shadow than I wish, yet I may give 
such an outline as any imagination can easily fill. 

A few years before this, she lost her mother, and grew up with- 
out the moulding influence of that gifted spirit. Yet every day she 
seemed to inherit and display her, as if she was to reign in her 
stead. Whether she moved in the brilliant circles of the city, or 
in the scenes of her country home, the same loveliness, the same 
gracefulness, re-appeared ; she flashed also in quick repartee, and 
startled while she charmed all around her with unexpected sallies, 
and improvisations. Such was her air and look in society, as 
" the gay creature of its element." From the numerous instances 
furnished me of this sparkling, outside phase of her character, 
I select the following village episode, in which she figured, as 
something that may bring her very interestingly before the fancy 
of many. 

It happened, one summer, that the members of the Debating 
Society ventured to leave the exciting field of politics, and to 
array before their assembled wisdom the delicate question : " Whether 
3 



3-i LAYS OF A LIFETIME. 

woman can boast equal mental power with man?" As might have 
been expected, such a theme raised a great excitement among the 
fair ones in the region round about ; and the debating hall was, 
on this occasion, filled with a rustling and threatening audience. 
" The Squire," the leading lawyer of the place, strenuously advo- 
cated the negative of the question. He was the literary Goliah, 
and all these Philistines looked up to him. The "Banner" was 
imder the patronage of his pen, and his voice was lifted up, as 
of a champion, in all affairs of state. After him, on the same 
side of course, followed his armor-bearer, chiefly noted for his 
devoted imitation of the manner and speeches of Patrick Henry. 
They all little thought what was to befall them ; that, with a 
mere pebble of satire, a woman's "mental power" was going to 
rout the whole of them, and make them game for the fowls of 
the air. 

Crito received an extraordinary communication for his paper. A 
Katy-did had become cognizant of how matters were going on ; 
and, after chirping satirically, first over political things in general, 
and then over the village, finally took up its station among the 
astonished members of the Debating Club. 



[ hi tjit ErphlirnE IBnnntr. ] 

Mr. Editor ; Pliny says, " There are insect vexations, which sting 
us and fly away," and if you catch me buzzing around the columns 
of youi- paper, Crito ! do not brush me aside, even if "in the 
ignorance of my backwood spirit," I chii'p too loudly. Crush me 
not with a paragraph, nor imprison me forever in a criticism. You 
are the only lion I fear in the mental desert ; and, from my shady 



KATY-DID AND KATY-DIDN't. 35 

covert, let me remind you of the Chinese fable. A traveller pass- 
ing through a field was so annoyed by the incessant hum of grass- 
hoppers, that he alighted from his horse, to extirpate every one, 
without reflecting, that, if left to themselves, they would all perish 
in a day. 

'Tis said, that insects have judicial rules 

Like man, "a long eventful history," 
They have their plebeian and patrician schools, 

And human dread of aristocracy ; 
Their nation's theory is equal right, — 
Why the)i do beetles and mosquitoes fight? 

'Tis said the bee-hive has its potentate, 

And the wax-palace scarcely bounds its pride; 

Its drones are not made ministers of state, 
Yet it has great absurdities, — beside 

A nation's depot for their treasured store, — 

Alas ! for man the " monster " to devour. 



The spider has its manuflicturing village, 

Where webs are woven of more kinds than one, 

Its " Reading-room " for literary pillage, 

And " Doctor's office," where long yarns are spun, 

Beside a tottering Justice, though a bold one, 

Two sweet infant lawyers and an old one. 

And politics, among this tiny race, 

Rous'd all the elements of party strife ; 

And there was one, a squire, who lost his place, 
And crush'd forever his politic life, — 



^ LAYS OF A LIFETIME. 

Becaase hs rtraetarr kad a dqr femadatkn. 
And lie a thnoo^i-somg antHusscn. 

T^ still amoi^ the Ctexarv vefa. 

Witk ~ just ewH^ of leaznii^ to misqpote.^ 
He mored. a vmlkn^ tiboii^l,— at kaet 'twas said. 

He pofied and critiased. and ^S^etdies" wrote; 
And fatai^d old pvose, duagk Brran ve^fst BBtcnded 
Sudi li!Kex"-wi>o45eT diooM by Mm W raienied. 

And those of vhcnni I write;, like all sodecr. 

W«e farm'd ef good and eriL fool and sige ; 
Some of no fimev and some of notnrietr; 

Some who could read, and some ne'er tnnf d a page 
And yet they had a fiterary qnonmL 
A Xewspi^ier; a Library, and Foxum! 

Thoe was a qn^tion once widdi they debated^ 
Widi "^pow^ of i^am^iL and ma^ of the iniz>a. 

Until Aeir Tcnr hncins were exeavated. 
And hot a m^hly chasm left bekond; 

The ieaoM qoestian was. '^ If woman can. 

Boast eqoal iw*w*«l povo' wttk that of 



AM one arcee ^ ea ch pet Aoo^ of iis bran. 
He hn^d £ke a ^poiTd cUld, because las own. 

AM nwde ibo bow. and scnpe. and ijni a i- WNna, 
And ^ov how vexy learned he had grown; 

Stntt^iii^ "^ God Aim m Bmtmmr wi& wry fMses,^ 

And mnrdriiig gestaire and Ae dnee swieet graces. 

rn ^K^ a spedmen of granite I k wi ghl, 

Hot left its movntaiB-bvow, and tnrnMfd down 



KATY-DID AND KATY-DIDN't. 37 

Its human precipice, while list'ners caught 

Its -wordy thunder, — 'tis not very long, — 
ril here indite it, — "/or to" crush forever 
High-minded woman in each learn'd endeavor. 

■ Man is the towering oak, around whose head 

The glo-vving light of intellect may shine ; 
Woman, the clinging tendril, seeks its shade, 

Fett'ring its branches like a poison vine ; 
Man's wit's the leaf, — woman's but the flower, 
Man's has its season, — woman's but the hour." 

Then Patrick Henry's parody arose, 

And echoed all his patron said before ; 
His wave of emphasis unequal flows, 

Now a faint murmur, — then a mighty roar ; 
And then like summer streams, as softly stealing 
As though it had not laved a single feeling. 

But yet go on, there's fame within thy reach, 

Give the mind's music but a loftier tone ; 
O, sink the pupil, and henceforward teach, 

Lean less on other minds, and trust your own, 
Then hope, like Henry's, in debate to wear 
As green a wreath as that which binds his hair. 



O Cicero ! fling thy mighty mantle here. 

And hide within its folds this simple truth,- 

'Twas study bade the gems of thought appear. 
And perseverance delv'd the mind in youth ; 



38 LAYS OF A LIFETIME. 

Exil'd by talent, till the palm was won, 
I think I'm right, — if not see "Middleton," 

KATY-DID. 

The curiosity to know who was the author of this, was un- 
bounded. The ire of some woman evidently was fully roused ; 
and, as it turned out, not only the poor debaters were made to 
smart, but the whole neighborhood had to pay. Having once be- 
gun, Katy-did would not be still. From behind her "leafy cov- 
ert," she was heard, for weeks, chirping about their ears, going 
repeatedly round the village, and several times making a foray 
over the county, spreading astonishment and dismay wherever she 
went. No one was spared. Character after character was hit off. 
All the current gossip flowed afresh, and old jokes, long gone to 
their tombs, started into more pungent life than before, to scare 
their victims over again. 

I have copied the above from a faded roll of newspaper scraps, 
in which only a few of the series have been preserved ; but even 
these are so full of local and personal allusions, as to require 
too much explanation before they could be quoted entire. Writ- 
ten off with incredible rapidity, they were only intended to amuse 
the hour, and to die when the frost came. Little was such a fate 
as this dreamed for them. 

While all this was taking place, the unfortunate "Squire," the 
first to feel the weight of her " mental power," returned one day 
from the city with "blushing honors thick upon him." In a 
political speech delivered there, he had won for himself great ap- 
plause ; and its echoes arrived before him, to confirm his rustic 
reputation. Hastening to do him justice, she can compare him to 
nothing less than the new luminary that had just been discovered. 



KATY-DID AND KATY-DIDN't. 39 



[ /nr tljB ErpulilirnE fmmx. ] 

There 're surely planets Newton never found. 

Worlds that his telescope ne'er wandered o'er, 
He said, " the waves of truth were swelling round. 

While he but gather'd pebbles on its shore." 
We're thankful, that he did not pick up there. 
The " Georgium Sidus" of our .hemisphere. 

He shines no longer as a mere abridgment; 

For, in a glorious cause, his mind threw by 
Its tinsel cloak, that dubb'd it non-existent, 

(Whose warp was Law, and woof was Poetry,) 
And clothed itself Avith strength, and swept a chord 
That yet is vibrating, — in the Tenth Ward, 

For there his eloquence has justly won 

The praise of all, — the true, the disaffected, — 

It might be such a welcome as the sun 

Met Monday morning, when 'twas least expected; 

But yet they cheer 'd him, till applause lost breath, 

So says the paper of the twenty-fifth. 



In the same piece, she introduces another member of the Club, 
the best speaker in it, and a great favorite with her. She would 
willingly have spared him, but his reserved and taciturn demeanor, 
and close devotion to his affairs in the Cotton Mill, piqued her 
into giving his dignity a sly pinch : 



40 LAYS OF A LIFETIME. 

And yet we know another hidden star, 
Who, soai'cely lending us a social ray, 

Will only flash upon us from afor, 

And hides itself in cotton clouds all day, 

Strange ! that an intellect of conscious power. 

Reserves its light for a forensic hour. 

And strange, that o'er the flow'rs of mind will creep 
Such insect faults as mispronunciation ; 

That when thoughts stii* his mind, as winds the deep, 
We're droicn-ded m the midst of an oration. 

A few dark feathers on a sky-lark's wings, — 

Yet Angelo thus speaks of little things : — 

"What have you done?" said one, "no change is made 
For days upon thy work;" — "Spare the reflection," 

Said Angelo, — •• I ve soften"d every shade 
A trifle, — and yet trifles make perfection. 

And that's no trifle" — Was he right? Ask Fame, 

Where in her galaxy we'll find his name. 



The remainder of this is a succession of amusing, political per- 
sonalities. The President himself does not escape, nor half-a- 
dozen aspirants for office nearer by ; for, recollect, this is the 
time when, to use her words : 

The body politic is out of breath ; 

For like Sangi-ado, skill'd in pharmacy, 
Vjm-Buren is warm-watering it to death. 

And Jackson drains its vital currency ; 



KATY-DID AND KATY-DIDN't. 41 

And " bone and sinew" weakens by the fetter, 
Tliough Tory nurses whisper it is better. 

These exciting days have all passed away noAv ; but not before 
they had proved too much for the animated little village, shortly 
after this paralyzing its energies, and leaving it in the helpless 
condition in which it now lies. It was the fear of such a catas- 
trophe, that kindled Sophia's patriotic fire in the concluding verses : 

But, rouse my country ! cans't thou take thy creed, 

The creed of Washington, and on the soil 
Where his own sword wrote Freedom! stand and read 

Of all the danger, suftering, and toil. 
That mark'd its hour of triumph, and then go 
A willing vassal to its deadliest foe"? 

If we have patriots left that scorn dominion, 
Hearts that are lit, the watchfire of the free, — 

A beacon-torch, not flick'ring m opinion. 
Whose light and essence all is Libei'ty ! 

Fling by the chain, nor in the darken'd air 

Play with its thunders, when its lightnings glare. 

And Woman! let thy sacred influence bend 

Over the stormy torrent, take its own, 
Its warring purposes, and gently blend 

Thy nature with its elements; and zone. 
As with a rainbow's clasp, — all dear to thee, — 
And for thy children, — kneel for Liberty ! 

KATY-DID. 

The secret was well kept. All this time, no one sharing it but 
the four sisters. Even their father went about, innocently con 



42 LAYS OF A LIFETIME. 

doling with the victims, and well pleased at seeing some of his 
own pet ideas and asperities coming forth in such buzzing words. 
There was a rival village a few miles oflF, directly opposed to 
this in politics, where a great meeting had just been held. x\fter 
an excursion thither, she returns laden with the following : 



[ liir tijj EB|iniiliran %mnn. ] 

I'm not a butterfly, upon my word, 

Not such a pretty day-light fly-away; — 

I'm not a nightingale, nor humming-bird, 
Breaking new hearts with music every day. 

I take the color of the times I light on, 

You will not know me from the leaf I write on. 

I love my shady home, when sunset flings 

Its gorgeous drapery round my leafy chamber, 

Yet, tired of statu quo, I lift my wings. 

And round the neighborhood I sometimes wander 

To visit other townis, and list the notes 

Of politicians peddling roimd their votes. 

'Twas Monday night, the fifteenth of September, 
('Tis best in party moves to fix the date, 

It serves a double purpose, — to remember 

The petty cogs that move the wheels of state. 

And flings a title on life's hum-drum pages, 

As they were born and stamped, for ftiture ages.) 

Then roar'd the cannon, — 'tis Fame's lisping voice, 
Passion and feeling, merged in one dark cloud 



KATY-DID AND KATY-DIDN't. 43 

Of thundering sublimity^ — no choice 

But shelter, or a pelting, to the crowd, — 
O, blest invention of politic shanties. 
Where all may find a place, — except — the Antis. 

Poor Pedagogue had there his speech by rote, 

By dint of study, and by oft repeating, 
He'd " taught the young idea how to shoot," 

And whom to aim at, — in the general meeting. 
Here was a pun, and there a calculation. 
To patter on the Whigs of every station ; 

For .Ped., we know, is an arithmetician. 
Can figure round a foolscap, and, he thought, 
With friends to aid, he'd put down self as nought, 

And carry one at the next town election. 



I'll leave the party organs, and their bellows. 
For the home-music of the water-wheel. 

Our nerves auincular will shortly tell us. 
That nerves all-factory have a right to feel ; 

And nothing strikes them with such dread sensation, 

As mingling colors, — or amalgamation. 



I omit a number of gay and witty fancies, too local to be now 
understood. In one of the communications that followed, Avhich is 
now missing, she lashed a well-known personage of the place, so 
severely, that the Editor, fearing to publish it, postponed it, with 
the notice, that '' Katy-did is under consideration ;" but afterward 



44 LAYS OF A LEFETEME. 

printed it, with liis own bungling alterations. Her keen ear could 
not endure the discordant lines ; and Crito himself comes under 
her readv rebuke : 



But " Katy-did's under consideration," — 

Thus did you frown upon my humble strain. 

And editorial deliberation 

May clip its metre, and its sense again. 

I hate to have my thoughts, and rhyme, and words. 

Like fruit, peck'd off. by editorial birds. 

Perhaps I was severe, and shook the earth 

Too roughly from a diamond, in my zeal ; 
•• Pray, pardon all,'" unconscious of its worth. 

I tried its temper vrith a point of steel. 
Great minds Anil sometimes feel a little thing. 
As huge Gohah perish'd by a sling. 

KATT-DIDX T. 

Her tun was now ended ; and, having remained unsuspected in 
her covert so far, she makes the mutilation to which she had been 
subjected, the occasion of the following graceful retreat. In some 
of its fairy imagery, we may see the influence of her favorite, the 
" Culprit Fay." She alludes prettily to two of her fair friends in 
the A-illage, and concludes with a legacy of good advice to the sage 
Crito. Until now, her vigorous and earnest way of dealing with 
the questions of the time, had created doubt, whether a woman 
could be the author; but, in the feminine allusion to "our curls," 
in this her farewell, she inadvertently let out so much of the secret, 
amid a roar of applause. 



KATY-DID AND KATY-DIDN'T. 46 



[ /nr tjiB fdunn. ] 

Sadness broods o'er the insect world to-day ; 

'Tis whispered, that I've nearly chirped my last ; 
There was a touch of sorrow in my lay, 

A slight decline observant: and though past, 
I feel a dull poetic rheumatism, 
Caught by exposure to a criticism. 

Perhaps it may be so : we cannot bind 
A tempest or a temper; both will blow. 

This spoils our curls, that discomposes mind ; 
But yet I hate such wit as Devereux 

Says, "whistles through a key -hole;" give a breeze 

That bears us Nature's wealth, — fruit, flowers and leaves,- 

A stout nor' wester, one that shakes the trees, 
E'en though it spoil me of my summer glory. 

The wretch may toss my hammock to the breeze, 
And tear the rafters from my attic story; 

If rough, 'tis honest ; and if wrong, it dares 

Betray the wrong, — nor mimics softer airs. 

My "acoi'n" chariot's waiting at the door, 

O'er "fire-fly" steeds the cobweb rein is thi'uwii. 

My drab-coat " miller" coachman snaps once more 
His whip of grass, and lash of thistle-down. 

And many a " four o'clock" (such time we keep.) 

Has clos'd its eyes, an hour ago, in sleep. 



46 LAYS OF A LIFETIME. 

Yet as the year, while gath'ring up its leaves. 

Its golden treasure, sighs o'er every one. 
And leaves a few to flutter on the trees. 

To tell of summer when the summer's gone ; 
Thus I, though few will miss my chirpings here. 
Yet to those few must leave a " Souvenir." 

The little "lady slippers'" that I wear. 

Within oxir prettiest village garden grew 
I fitted them one day whUe wand'ring there. 

And buckled them with studs of morning dew : 
These with my spangled deshabille of green. 
I leave our fairy-tooted Village Queen. 

The " cloak of butterflies" 1 wear from home. 
My zone of " ribbon grass,'" and " pink" brocade. 

My " violet'" bonnet, with its hvmi-bird plume. 
And its own veil of gossamer, — to shade 

A blue eye, drooping 'neath a lid as fair 

As •• lily of the valley" cap I wear. 

To "Crito," my Port-folio, rose-leaves boimd 

In the rich velvet of a "fleur de lis.'" 
Whose ink was shower drops, and whose pen was found 

Wing'd in a blust'ring, strngless bumble-bee; 
And on one page a hint, and kind good-bye. 
And then, — a long adieu to poetry -. 

Tls yours to fling your " Banner"" to the wind. 
To float an empty, idle, flaunting thing, 

Or bid it flutter o"er the realms of mind. 
Starlit and brilliant as the Evening's wing ; 



KATY-DID AND KATY-DIDN'T. 47 

A Standard round which classic thought will flit, 
Or vulgar ensign for each scribbling wit. 

Let Satire, when she points her shaft of steel. 

Be polished glitt'ring, when she lays us low; 
Wounds from a rusty falchion never heal ; 

Like Sitgreaves give a scientific blow. 
Let each stroke fall, as schooled by Sheridan. 
Aiid rear your columns as Ck)rintliian. 

Study Phrenology, that potent science, 

'Till fingers, like the ^villow-wand, discover 

Through countless strata of alluvial sense 

The depths of all those mighty streams, that wander 

Through the raind's caverns, bringing thoughts to light. 

That else had gurgled in a moonless night. 

Then choose some Alpine head, where bump o'er bump 

Rises in Spurzheim majesty sublime. 
Where all is natural, and not a thvunp 

Tells of the tilts and tournaments of time ; 
Then loose the satire, — let the glacier fall 
On medium wits, and avalanche us all. 

KATY-DIDJf'T. 



III. 



THE LIKENESS OF THE INNER FACE. 



In this merely outlined portrayal of the sportive and brilliant 
girl, just as she appeared to those who saw her in the world, 
it was not intended to imply, that there were no deeper char- 
acteristics, all that time, in play. Within, she had her own pri- 
vate world. Her ardent and impressible mind had entertained 
many a glowing thought ; her plastic disposition had very early 
been touched and ennobled by the moulding influences of relig- 
ion ; and her sensitive, high-strung spirit had not escaped occa- 
sions of severe trial and unhappiness. Many a poem, hereafter 
to be introducec^, was written during the same years in which she 
chirped her "Katy-did" and Katy-didn't." 

All this was well known to those who knew her best. But 
in presenting her to those who did not know her, and by whom 
I would gladly see her appreciated, it seemed the better way 
to follow the usual course of friendship, and reveal a charming 
and gifted woman just as she always revealed herself: at first, 
simply bright, attractive, and dazzling, but afterward manifesting 



THE LIKENESS OF THE INNER FACE. 49 

ever-deepening qualities of mind and heart, that shot their elec- 
tric light as deeply into the mind and heart observing her. As 
she did in life, so can she be made to do now ; only, in place 
of the propitious opportunities that usually open the heart to a 
friend, I will endeavor so to group these lays of her lifetime, 
(not in the order of time, but appropriately to certain circum- 
stances,) that her nature will appear gradually to expand, and 
beautify itself, and a feeling be created as of a progress in be- 
coming acquainted with her. 

There occurred an interesting event, in which this sparkling 
supei-ficies gives way at once to a vision of an inner and finer 
face. A wedding rises on the scene. She one day put this 
period to all romance : and I find her, about the same time, 
alluding thus playfully to her satisfaction with her choice: "My 
light head wants a ballast of discretion, judgment, etc., etc. 
Who knows but that his thoughts, and the volatile particles of 
mine together, Avill produce the same effect as glass and quick- 
silver, which apart, are dissimilar, but which united, are good 
for every day reflection ; attracting the beautiful, and all that is 
worth attracting?" I need hardly pause to record how happily 
and devotedly her being henceforth redoubled itself, in one who 
through life returned, most truly and ardently, the wealth of love 
she gave. 

Now she developed the woman indeed ; and what a phenome- 
non woman's nature presents, when she becomes a wife and a 
mother ! She is immediately born again into a more vital exist- 
ence. Affections and sympathies, before unknown, now appear in 
manifold beauty within her. Love for her husband first wells up 
richly ; then love for her children bursts forth, like so many fresh 
springs, from the hidden places of her soul. Her nature becomes 

variegated with the new characteristics that play and glow upon it. 
4 



50 Lays vF a lxfeiime. 

Nev en»pes are fth. and boarlr iacras^. 2seT dades disearer 
tih cmscltc s, and press bcr vidi tihteir high «x^eMT. lifr dawns 
in ie great reafitv. vidi all its scenes moet deefdr. Trridbr. vannlr 



Here 15 anoiiKr aitd ioAi j-cr:::---:-.!-. i:.«:isi rareir added to 
tbis mew bcii^ h^ Miasik, mhea ako givoi. re-'inTests iramui vidi 
a KMBUitic beaadhr. no \oogiT knnan bat dxrine. It is die cen- 
traL ^vii^ I^ci «^ a poetic mind and terapenaMnt, ra^ating 
diroa^ aU. and j^csi^rii]^ ereiy tliii^ aroamd it, as mitb die 
Incs of Hear^ S«^ a wmsudiood, vitib dds iis angefic crovn, 
win be aecwded to St^ilna. Her a&cti<»s and imaginatiMi pol- 
satod togcikci, like two li6^-st^eane aradati^ witbin bcr. One 
crer recused Ibe motions of Ae o&er. Ereiy thing sbe saw, 
and felt, and tboi^C, was iotcbgd wiib tbe ^ones of tbk in- 
ner fi^it. dmt was erer AJnii^ O » o a gb d»e orr^aJs of bo- beait. 

A groap of kyvdr duldren soon gaibered abo«t ber feet, and 
eacb <»e. as die dasped it to ber breast, ^e also embraced witb 
i^as bi^er matenal ia^inct of ber soaL Beantifiil was it, to 
see ^e &ir, jnma^ modMr gBaiog so wondoii^hf into ber cbil- 
drene' e^res, and bdhoUBag sn^ mysteries ibere. Listen to bo- 
^ad aod daleet maange over one of tbese fitde onee. wboee soft 
bveatb and fife, jost beghming to mii^le widi bcr own, b^an 
^so to &n and moTe tbe tnder senses <^ ber ftner. Tbe pas- 
sage is takes frnm a ktio- to ber Mentor-ancle, 

~Mt svamo- bas passed fike dD mj atkipatioiK, witb it? 
propuses bat bdf-fidfiDed, a^ess I except a sweet fitde E^ay on 
Wt""*- Xatare, wbicb I bate bat latdtf recetred from its Aadbor; 
and as it k pabfiiyied, I aq^poee I may, in new^aper langiage, 
^re TO« a de^iiptiai. 

"It is a beantiblhr boand daodecno. wboee tran^arcnt coter- 



THE LIKENESS OF THE INNER FACE. 51 

ing would remind you of an unclouded morning, when it wakes 
on a shadowed world ; or if fancy may emphasize reality, we 
might believe the changing blushes of " Nourmahal" were impris- 
oned under its surface ; and yet this is but a veil which Life, 
that skilful artist, has drawn over two roses that almost wave 
beneath their cover, and which are copied fi'om an exquisite orig- 
inal in the Louvre of Heaven ; and if you have ever looked on 
the frescoes of sunset, you would at once recognize their claim. 

" Above these, two deep blue I's (that in Roman character would 
designate it as the second volume) are surrounded by an ex- 
pressive vignette, emblematic of affection, good-nature, and intel- 
ligence ; and, unlike the gay volume of many a family library, 
there is not a particle of gilt in a leaf that I have turned ; 
but its pearly pages are of the same transparent whiteness as its 
tiny clasps, whose rosy tips might tempt one to believe a sun- 
beam had chiselled them from a cloud. 

" The motto of its title-page is written in smiles ; for, they are 
the golden letters in the orthography of angels, and is simply char- 
acteristic of its Author, 

" ' Of such is the kingdom of Heaven.' 

"It has been often reviewed, and ever in kindness. Some of the 
sweetest reflections I have ever seen, were on this subject ; and all 
at least award me the school-girl's laurel ; for my pretty volume is 
neither dog-eared nor disfigured. 

"It is a work of mystery ; for months I have hourly perused 
it, and yet I have made but little progress in those hieroglyphics 
which are the sentences of its destiny. I can but trace the A, B, C, 
of feeling which after-years must syllable ; I may point, but God 
must give its true emphasis, that sweet may be the intonations of its 
character, and every period of life musical at its close. 



52 LAYS OF A LIFETIME. 

" I have said, that it is a volume of mystery : of mystery, indeed ; 
for it is written with the phosphorescence of eternity, and can only 
be discovered by those passions which the future must kindle. Prov- 
idence will hold them to the flame, and human love must weep or 
glory in the development. 

" But who can appreciate the intensity of interest, with which I 
catch at each expression, and rest my conclusions on the most trivial 
evidences of mind? Morning has found me at the task, and mid- 
night, bending over it, unwearied by the study ; and it is strange, 
but I never turn a page, nor discover a beauty, that I do not feel 
as if an angel folded its wings, and was absorbed Avith me in its 
contemplation : and at night, when its lids are closed, and I draw 
it nearer to my heart, it is the very prayer of my bosom ; a flower, 
winning by its own loveliness the sunshine and the dew of mercy." 

Such a keen instinct for the beautiful in her children, could not but 
add a thousand- fold to the strength of her love for them. The in- 
fluence of the same high gift appeared, also, in every thing else. 
As it made her enjoyments most vivid and intense, so it gave her 
a capacity for suffering which few can understand. Her whole life- 
time comes before me, with this thought. Her marriage ushered in 
her destiny, as well as deepened her nature ; and I see her stand- 
ing in the opening of that vista, with a heart so quick to feel the 
weight of a woe, as well as the ftilness of a joy, and quivering, as 
the chill atmosphere of succeeding years touches her with adver- 
sities, disappointments, bereavements, and agonies, almost innumer- 
able. 

In contrast with the above joyous, hopeful strain over a child 
just born to her, hearken to the wail she utters, in the first of 
the following group, over one whose breath and life are ebbing 
awav from her. 



THE LIKENESS OF THE INNER FACE. 53 



TO A DYING INFANT. 

Come to me, dearest ! lay thy head 

Upon thy mother's breast ; 
And lift those sweet, blue eyes, and smile, 

As if thou lov'dst its rest ; 
For it is midnight with my heart. 

And ev'ry star that shone 
So brilliant in life's firmament, 

Is waning, or has gone. 

My God ! I would not pine at aught 

Thy justice should decree ; 
Yet spare this flutt'ring leaf, that hangs 

Upon a blasted tree ; 
For she is life's ^olian harp, 

And, as its storms rush by. 
Draws music from its tempest-cloud, 

And sweetness from a sigh. 

Father of mercy ! many a pang 
Has p^tssed this aching brain ; 



54 LAYS OF A LIFETIME, 

0, tear not Thou another link 
From feeling's broken chain ! 

In prayer I've asked submission still, 
To say, " Thy will be done ;" 

But like the sea-shell far removed, 
Love murmurs for its own ! ^ 

There's not a joy e'er sprung for me, 

But withered where it grew ; 
And not a hope has sunned my path. 

But left its shadow too. 
Is it from evil days to come. 

That Thou would'st take my child? 
And win for its eternal home. 

The pure, the undefiled? 

Father, from that better land 

That faith has shown my heart ! 
Thy spirit comes at earthly call, 

Submission to impart. 
Pure falls the snow from yonder cloud. 

And pure my child shall be ; 
A snow-flake death inay sweep from earth, 

So it but drift to Thee. 



THE LIKENESS OF THE INNER FACE. 55 



THE MOTHER'S PRAYER. 

WRITTEN FOR THE MATERNAL ASSOCIATION OF WALDEN. 

0, HEAR US, thou Eternal God ! 

Thy Son life's darkened path has trod, 

And while we for our children plead, 

0, let His mercy intercede ! 

It is not earthly joys we crave, 

The verdure that could hide a grave, 

The gilding of a little clay, 

For care or death to Avear away. 

We ask for grace, to lift each thought 
To Thee, from whom its power is caught, 
Each link of the Eternal mind. 
From earth unclasped, to Thee resigned ; 
Coiled is the chain, corroding here. 
For life hath sighs, and death a tear ; 
But stretched to Thee, 'twill span the sky. 
And fold Thine own Eternity. 



56 LAYS OF A LIFETIME. 

Like that bright stream whose waters glide, 

Unmingled with an adverse tide ; 

0, thus, from earthly passions free, 

May ev'ry feeling flow to Thee ! 

Though Death may have the tempest's power. 

To gather from the heart its flower, 

The blast that leaves our bosom lone, 

Shall place its blossom on Thine own. 

And, mother, if thou ere didst start 
From dreams to clasp it to thy heart. 
Forgetful that the cold earth piled 
The pillow of thy buried child. 
While ev'ry thought by grief subdued, 
Turned to its own deep solitude. 
And sought, from sympathy apart, 
The darkness of a shadowed heart ; 

If thou dost know what 'tis to feel 
A Saviour's accents o'er thee steal, 
In that sad moment whisp'ring thee, 
" 0, suffer them^ to come to me ;" 
Then, by the voice that won thee back 
Again to tread life's rugged track, 
A wand'rer mid its light and shade, 
To meet its duties undismayed ; 

0, trust the mercy that has given 
Thy heart its Hiype, thy child a Heaven ; 
That, while thy soul with grief was bowed. 
Wove its hright promise m the cloud ; 



THE LIKENESS OF THE INNEK FACE. 67 

The lily, when the storm-winds sweep, 
Will blossom calmly on the deep, 
And, Saviour ! from life's troubled sea 
Shall prayer its wave-flower spring to Thee. 



5S LAT5 OF A UFEHME. 



BT-A5I>*T. 



i.z.,~i -i ^ jA ht stood, 

^ IB icaii&. ho- tihc fjcd boj: 

^^~i -^ vm. floor aoid doir, voe ssreved 

_ . -••a. iZLi -r 5^ tor. 

•'O. _ « dad! 

- 117 £1- eat It." 
* said. 



tint daj ^aM emu^ 

f«S ai««T? 5^T io blMOtf 

u^ ««— g»- vinds lie U^ ? 



I-^ - - ^ ijic vnnd. 

T« . ■> \as kreoat: 

Aod ^Oft^ life's e: ^- ^o g tiid , 

or B^iak ^mr. her ^ 



THE LIKENESS OF THE INNER FACE. 59 

And hov'ring o'er his heart again, 

A withered, leafless thing seemed now ; 

'Twould do to perch upon, — but then, 
The Future was the foliaged bough. 

He scorned the Present, — longed to climb 

The distant Alp of future time ; 
And trod the actual, but to sigh, 
•'Dear mother, ivhen is Bj-and-By?'' 



m. 

And thus beguiled, the present horn- 
Was worthless to the dreaming boy ; 

Thought rushed through life, bv rock and flower 
To swell the distant wave of joy. 

Years past, — again in tears, — he lay, 
Beside his mother's lonely tomb : 

The mile- stone of a dreary way, 

'Twixt travelled life, and life to come. 

It pointed from the trodden past. 
To truth's most simple path at last ; 
And Present, Past, and Future showed. 
As windings of the self-same road. 



IV. 

He rose, — a moment's pause he stood, — 

A flower had tAvined that cold grave-stone 

Root, spreading branch, and cradled bud, 

A trifold natui'c veiled in one. 



60 LAYS OF A LIFETIME. 

That flower his primer ! gave his mind 

This lesson with instruction rife : 
Past, Present, Future are combined; 

Who wins the Present, conquers Life. 

'Tis present duty circles soul, 

Whose round from Heaven to Heaven must run 
He trod the cirque, he neared the goal. 

And ended life, where life begun. 



He conquered — and the victor lay 

Beneath the church-yard turf asleep ; 
And holy men drew near to pray, 

And loving eyes were there to weep. 
What ! weep ye o'er the slumbering brave, 

The hero, when the battle's done ? 
Who conquers life, subdues the grave ; 

And, Death subdued, all Heaven is won. 

Then leave the conqueror to his rest. 
The Past upon the Future's breast. 
Both Omnipresent, and on high ; 
Trust God to wake him By-and-By. 



THE LIKENESS OF THE INNER FACE. 61 



THE THUNDER SHOWER. 



Flowers died upon the Summer gale, 

For sultry was the afternoon ; 
And daylight looked so tired and pale, 

'Twas watched o'er by the harvest moon. 
And weary as the day, Marie, 
Half resting on her mother's knee. 
With o'erflushed cheek and drooping eye. 
Impatient threw her bonnet by. 
" 0, dear mamma ! when you were young. 
Were Summer days so very long? 
And could you read, and could you sew? 
I'm sure I don't know ivhat to do." 
"And yet, Marie," her mother said. 

And pointed to their latticed bower, 
"Beneath this honeysuckle shade, 

There's scarce a ray to vex the hour." 

"0, could we only give the soul 
A trellis, as we did this shade. 
The heart might find 'neath self-control, 
A climate that itself had made." 



62 LAYS OF A LIFETIME. 



II. 



"But, mother, what is self-control?" 

" That power, my love, by which we bind 
The wandering feelings of the soul, 
To grow more beautiful confined ; 
'Tis ACTION disciplined by thought, 
'Tis WILL subdued, — and conscience taught 
The power, when impulse oft would soar, 
To cage the bird, and shut the door." 

" 0, now I know," exclaimed Marie, 

'"Tis Natural Philosophy ; 
They always teach it at our school. 
But, mother, will it make me cool?" 
Ah, lady, now thy counsel keep, 

'Twere well were feeling thus confined ; 
But every day new tendrils peep, 
That every day must pause to bind. 

And see ! across the waves of heaven. 
The freighted clouds move to and fro ; 

Sad wrecks ! they'll strew the shores of even, 
And dash their life-drops far below. 



III. 

The thunder treads the air, — and now 
Its gloomy shadow sweeps the ground, — 

And tossed from off its ebon brow, 
Its lightning tresses fall around. 



THE LIKENESS OF THE INNER FACE. 63 

"And see!" delighted, cried Marie, 

" How the bright lightning springs to me ; 

From yonder cloudy cliff it came. 

And now, — I almost catch the flame." 

The mother turned, — she saw the fire 

Clasp trustingly the safety wire. 

Then glide to earth with thundering yell, 

And fall, as conscious that it fell. 
"Look, mother!" said the fearless child, 
As yet unmindful, in her mirth, 

That mother faint, with terror wild, 
Pale as her robe, had sunk to earth. 

Ah, lady ! could we give the soul 

A trellis, as we do the flower. 
The heart, secure, 'neath self-control. 

Would never dread a thunder shower. 



IV. 

Day followed day, and sunshine rolled 

Its glory over earth and sky. 
And common things were turned to gold, 

By sunset's wondrous alchemy. 
And calmly breathed the summer night, 

Ere the storm's clouded wing drew near, 
Waned out the moon's soft astral light, 

And many a starry chandelier ; 
It came at Nature's banquet hour, 

When fragrance floated on the breeze. 



64 LAYS OF A LIFETIME. 

And jewels hung on every flower. 
And glittered on the dancing leaves. 

Then, on the wall of heaven there glowed 
The lightning finger of a GoD ; 
And ghastly grew the universe. 
As if it feared the Chaldic curse. 



Poor Marie trembled : and her fear 

Had blanched her rosy cheek like pain : 
In silence, mother, wipe the tear. 

Example now. for precept's vain. 
No terror shades that mother's brow, 
The changeless Kp is tranquil now : 
TVhat power hath hushed her bosom's strife, 
And left its pulse at play with life ? 
She stood before the open sash ; 
She knelt beneath the circling flash ; 
Clasped Marie's little hand and prayed, 
" On Thee, Grod, our souls be stayed I 
And while Thy lightnings round us dart. 

And fearful though the spirit be, 
Father, soothe the trembling heart, 

And self-control be trust in Thee !" 

Where was £he cloud when morning caught 
The glory of the dav, new risen? 

With Marie's feai-, and Marie's thought, 
Both lifted, and both lost in heaven. 



IV. 



"THE ROCK, THE FALL, THE WOODED- WALK, 
THE RIVER." 

Her being expands again, most charmingly, over still other home- 
scenes of these years. They introduce her amid the sweetness 
and freshness of Nature ; and while her home, in itself, illustrates 
her moral loveliness, these, its out-door scenes, bring into view a 
few phases of her being that have an affinity to them. 

The village, with all its enterprise, had not encroached upon one 
bank of the river. It had spread itself over the broad slope oppo- 
site, leaving the cliffs on the side of her own "household hills" in 
much of their original wildness and beauty. The ancient homestead 
thus enjoyed the advantages of both. It was the cottage in the 
grove, spoken of before, and stood on the brow of a steep declivity, 
which was thickly foliaged with locust trees, from the top to the 
water's edge. When the Falls were full, their deep tones were here 
distinctly heard ; and when made inaudible by the lessening of the 
flood, tlieir reverberations still lingered mystically in the low rumble 
of the tremblins casements. The " Old Hearthstone," with its double 
sloping roof, and broad piazzas, both in front and rear, flashed a 
greeting to the morning sun from its jutting dormer-windows, as he 



66 LAYS OF A LIFETIME. 

rose above the heights over the river ; and bade him a gokien tare- 
well, when he sunk behind the wood-crowned hills, rolling upward 
toward the west. Its high-peaked gable of gray stucco faced the 
blue Shawangunk and Catskills in the north ; and in the opposite 
direction, beyond the deep gorge of the "Kill," the village lay scat- 
tered over the green uplands, to the distant "church on the hill;" 
and its white houses gleamed brightly through the trees on the lawn. 
It was further oif than it appeared to be ; yet, over the intervening 
space, so wide that the river had room to curve, the sounds of the 
different Sunday bells came floating together, and had time to mingle 
their notes into one sweet chime of worship. 

No less than thirty drives intersected the comitry round about ; 
and as many rural Avalks crossed and recrossed nearer home. But, 
of them all, the " wooded- walk" was the finest. It was a broad blue 
pathway, so colored by the crumbling slate-rock, winding along the 
river-bauk, beneath embowering evergreens, undulating inland, for 
a little distance, over the hillocks in the laurel grove ; and then, 
turning under the steep cliifs, with their thick shade of overhanging 
cedars, it led through a cool archway of foliage, till it reached and 
overlooked the waterfall and its rocky enclosure. 

Here was the chief attraction. Below was the great flat rock, to 
which the visitors used to descend, in order to see the waters boil 
around them, and to catch the spray flung from above ; while, 
directly over their heads, a foot-bridge, made of half-a-dozen wires, 
hung bending across the chasm, vibrating in the wmd, and under 
every passing step. This was the curiosity of the region, in a cir- 
cuit of many miles. It was a picturesque object at all times, as it 
was seen from the ravine below spanning the torrent ; but, at night 
especially, when its light materials were invisible, the effect was 
almost spectral, as the white draperies of those who were on it 
flitted to and fro, as of beings treading the air. 



"the rock, the fall, the wooded-walk, the river." 67 

These are a few of the scenes amid which she loved to wander 
and muse while no one followed her ; and, in some of its sequestered 
spots, haunted only by the moonlight, and the dashings of the silvered 
river, she gathered many a thought, and wreathed the imagery of 
many a metred dream. 



68 LAYS OF A LIFETIME. 



THE WALLKILL AT WALDEN. 

Beneath long lashes of the drooping willow, 

Flash thy blue waters ; and the cedar shade 
Bends fi'om its cliff, above the rushing billow, 

As if to guard the solitude it made. 
Here can we find a dial in the flower, 

What time the opening blossom flushed or fell. 
And mark at vesper, from its rocky tower. 

The deadly nightshade swing its purple bell. 

There are high rocks above thy waters peeping. 

And the vexed wave %sighs heavy to the shore ; 
Yet many a foam-wreath o'er their rough sides creeping. 

Have touched with beauty what was dark before. 
Let the mind gather wisdom, ne'er to falter, 

Tb.us meet its incident, yet hold its power : 
And gi'aceful yield to ills it cannot alter, 

Yet leave its sparkle on the darkest hour. 

Winding through shade, or glancing by the meadow, 
Flinging the spray-bead OA'er rock and tree. 

One cannot think that direful storm or shadow, 
Beautiful river I ever rose from thee. 



"the rock, the fall, the wooded-walk, the river." 69 

Yet many a cloud the morning sky embraces. 
Death, as a sunbeam, to its bosom gave, 

And still at night they come with pallid faces. 
And flitter ghost-like, o'er the trembling wave. 

O ! who would ever think this tiny bubble. 

Pillowed on beams would float in glory there ! 
Or swell the mighty aggregate of trouble, 

When gath'ring tempests shudder through the air? 
And yet these very drops through ether driven. 

As tears may wander from the storm's dark eye ; 
Or tumble o'er the cloudy cliffs of heaven, 

Adown the thunder mountains of the sky. 

O, it is strange ! Philosophy that traces 

The path of stars, the spray-mist from its wave, 
Resting on Thought, assigns to worlds their places. 

Yet sinks the mind that lifts it — to a grave ; 
Or probing earth, unveils its deep attraction, 

The secret balance that its powers control, 
And yet, denies the world of human action. 

The poise of God, — the magnet of the soul. 

But darkness o'er the distant wood is creeping ; 

The valley, couched in shadow, sinks from sight ; 
The mountain in its robe of mist is sleeping ; 

And e'en my household hills are touched with night. 
Yet, ere I leave this shore, perhaps forever, 

Thoughts gathered here I'll yield it ere we part, 
A feeling stronger than the rushing river. 

And deeper than the veins that feed its heart. 



70 LAYS OF A LIFETIME. 

Here has the morning talked to me of Heaven, 

As the wave flushed beneath its waking kiss ; 
And the soft fresco of the cloud at even, 

Shadowed a world more beautiful than this ; 
The Rock, the Fall, the Wooded-Walk, the River, 

The wild flower dangling from the cliff above. 
All lift the soul to Thee, Almighty Giver I 

And syllable to faith eternal love. 

And as the spirit turns in adoration, 

Earth's varied page, the volume Mercy gave, 
Where thus bright streams italicize creation, 

With the rude emphasis of wind and wave, 
O, guide the heart, Creator ! lest Thy creature 

Read not Thy glory in the earth and sky. 
And, from the thrilling eloquence of nature. 

Translate Omnipotence as destiny. 

All power is Thine, yet Mercy power is guiding, 

Love infinite as potver, still guards its own ; 
As the dread tempest, 'neath a ray subsiding. 

Sinks to a breeze, and floats the thistle-down. 
Existence springs from Thee I Thy glance all-seeing, 

The wide magnificence of heaven surveys ; 
Yet turned to earth, — falls brightly on our being. 

As fiills the moonbeam o'er the tide it sways. 



THE ROCK, THE FALL, THE WOODED- WALK, THE RIVER."' 71 



A SUN-SET. 

0, BRIGHTLY waves the green old tree, 
That m my childhood shadowed me : 
'Twas here, upon the grass I played, 
And here my little grotto made ; 
And decked it, for I loved it avcII, 
With gathered moss, and pearly shell. 
Save that the winds are talking now. 
To that old crone, yon blasted bough. 
Above, the same bright leaves are hung, 
Around the same broad shadow flung. 
That beckoned me when I was young. 
My children 'round me in their play. 
Arc wand'ring where I used to stray ; 
Now o'er the brook, now o'er the green, 
Where pebble bright or flower is seen, 
And bring the trophies of their chase 
To deck my sylvan resting-place. 

But, oh ! what memories intrude, 
To mar this peaceful solitude ! 
Visions that life has hurried by, 
Its stern and dark reality. 



72 LAYS OF A LIFETIME. 

The treasured words that here were spoken 
The household ties that death has broken : 
The heart from ours that fate bid sever, 
Parted for years, — perhaps forever. 
Oh, who would live, till age shall steal 
The all of life save power to feel ; 
To feel alone, in thought as years, 
A thing of sadness and of fears, 
A wreck upon time's loneliest shore, 
And washed by mem'rys billows o'er ; 
Tossed to and fro 'twixt death and life, 
Rising and sinking with the strife, 
But waiting till a mightier wave 
Shall boom him onward to the grave ; 
His league with life so closely run. 
Scarce seems for him to dawn yon sun, 
Save as a wreck to glare upon. 
Doomed like yon blasted bough to wave 
'Mid the bright things of life, unblest, 
Touched with the death-chill of the grave, 
Without its hope for guerdon — rest. 

Alas ! in reason's troubled hour, 
Such thoughts will o'er the soul be driven ; 
Yet, born beneath the thunder shower. 
The blossom bares its breast to heaven ; 
And faith looks upward from its grief. 
Though sown in darkness, nursed by fears 
'Till hope, unfolding like the leaf, 
Brio;htens fi'om tears. 



"THE ROCK, THE FALL, THE WOODED-WALK, THE RIVER." 73 

Beside our door there lingers one ' 
Whose gaze is on the setting sun, 
As if its glory-beam inwrought 
His mind, and fixed the hue of thought ; 
Perchance his soul, in heavenly dream, 
Reads its own morrow in the beam : 
And tranquil thought, like yonder ray. 
Is presage of a goodly day ; 
For he is old, and Death so near, 
That oft he starts his step to hear ; ^ 
Time rests upon his brow, — but then 
The tyrant sways but common men, — 
Years flung like storms a diadem. 

Upon a dreaded height, 
The white locks drift around his brow ; 
Yet brightly o'er life's gathered snow, 
Mind lingers, and its sun- set glow 

Bathes age in living light. 
With feeling chastened, not subdued, 

Humbly the path of life he trod ; 
And life, and change, and solitude. 

But taught his earnest spirit God. 
He read the Midnight, and His power 

Its starry alphabet revealed ; 
And found Him, where the smallest flower 

Traced His initial in the field ; 
His earthly sympathies o'erawed, 
Twine 'round mankind and reach to God. 
Children forget that he is gray, 
And frolic round him in their play ; 



LAYS OF A LIFETIME. 

And e'en my infant turns from me, 
To rest upon that old man's knee. 

'Tis beautiful! to see him there, 

With laughing lip his kisses seek ; 
Now playing with his silvery hair, 

Then leaning on his fiirrowed cheek. 
Beautiful age ! that thus canst twine 

Life's rugged rock, and freely gives 
Its bosom to the clasping vine, 

'Till desolation, hid in leaves, 
"Woos life's young climber, tired, to rest, 
As mine, upon his aged breast. 

" Come, father ! speak of days agone, 
Those palmy days of mind that shone. 
So brightly, when ' M'Fingal's page 
Darted its lightning o'er the age.' " 

Back rolled the heavy flood of time. 
And laves again his manhood's prime ; 

Again, his memory gathered all 
To which it clung in former years : 

Again he trod the Senate-hall, 
At home with his compeers ; 
Again, around his social hearth. 
Flashed wit, and repartee, and mirth, 
Those golden links in history's chain, 
Which only friendship can retain ; 
For veiled from sight will ever roll, 
The under- current of the soul : 



THE ROCK, THE PALL, THE WOODED- WALK, THE RIVER.' ib 

Full swells the stream to many a lip, 
But friendship ! at the fount may sip, 
True as the willoAV-wand to find^ 
The hidden birth-place of the mind. 

I had not marked the day-beams' flight, 
But now the dark-fringed lid of night 
Sinks heavy on the distant hill, 
And busy life and thought grow still, 
" And, ! why linger thus my child. 
An old man's broken tale to hear ? 
Unless it be," he said, and smiled, 
" A classic taste for ruins, dear !" 

Ruin ! the word sighed o'er his past, 

For life was tott'ring to its fall. 
And Mem'ry is a mournful blast. 

To sigh around its crumbling wall. 
'Twas but a moment ; faith had twined, 

So close, where joys had dropped away ; 
Its ivy clasp was round his mind, 

Another life waved o'er decay ! 
Near fourscore years were there to tell 
Of tow'ring hopes, that rose — and fell. 
Though not an earthly prop was riven, 
But gave a broader glimpse of Heaven. 

And yet 'tis ruin ! sad and lone, 
A Pharos of some Deep unknown, 
A trembling beacon, where this sea 
Just empties in eternity. 



76 LAYS OF A LIFETIME. 

Aside, the links to life are flung, 
, Its chain of hope is all unstrung. 
Brother of earthly life is gone,'' 
And 'mid the past he stands alone ; 

Alone ! upon our sod. 
And yet a noble structure ! mind 
Achieved the task by Grod designed ; 
God planned the temple, left him free, 
And faith has worked its destiny ; 
Life ! shaped its immortality, 
Till life has imaged God. 

My infant boy has sunk to rest, 
Upon his grandsire's aged breast ; 

And folded in that arm, 
That kindly bosom throbbing near, 
Think you his spirit dreams of fear. 

Of ruin., or of harm ? 



THE ROCK, THE FALL, THE WOODED-WALK, THE RIVER. ( i 



CHILDREN m THE CHURCHYARD OF ST. 

"A simple child, dear brother Jim, 
That lightly draws its breath. 
That feels its life in every limb, 
What should it know of death V 

Wordsworth. 

The turf looks green on the churchyard mound, 
The elm's soft shade flickers over the ground ; 
And a troop of children have come forth to play, 
Where the freshest grass and the shadow lay ; 
Ah ! little they know of sorrow and death. 
And the ghastly world that is hushed beneath 1 
As they skip 'round the graves, and come and pass, 
With a bounding step o'er the yielding grass ; 
Or singing and laughing, with childish glee, 
And chasing each other from tree to tree. 

My heart's with my childhood ! mem'ry has flown 

To its early nest, by our old hearthstone ; 

It has flown like a bird from a blighted tree, 

To the greener joys that once waved for me ; 

It has borne me again to my own cottage door, 

'Neath its sweetbrier shade ; I'm a child once more I 



78 LAYS OF A LIFETIME. 

Un the broad piazza the moonbeams lay ; 

In the open casement the air-harps play ; 

From the locust grove comes an answering call. 

To a iovous voice from the echoino; hall : 

And my mother's arms are around me now '. 

Her soft hand presses my throbbing brow I 

I see her at morn, — at the hour of bed I 

When the prayer and the last good-night are said, 

And my lip is repeating it o'er and o'er, — 

I'm a child once more I I'm a child once more ! 

But see ! they are wearied ! it's passed o'er them all. 

And now they encircle the old church wall ; 

There, in the shade, half reclined on the ground. 

The lesson or story is whispered around ; 

Some 'neatli the elm's broad shadow are laid, 

Twining their locks with a grassy braid ; 

The dead all around ! and the living there ! 

With the Spring's first gift in their glossy hair I 

One beautiful creature has gently thrown 

Her fragile form on an old tombstone, 

And she calls from her marble couch, " see, 

I^ve found the best place, 'tis the place for me!" 

Memory, Memory, sad is thy doom I 

Come back to the tomb, come back to the tomb I 

Come back to the loved, to the nnforgot. 

To this bosoDi, thy lonely burial spot. 

Thei-e rest the hopes that to ruin were hurled ; 

There griefs lie buried from all the world ; 

Fold thy wings o'er my heart, sweet Memory I 

For a tomb I a tomb I is the place for thee ! 



V. 

HEAD AND HEART IMPROMPTU. 

Her poems are so self-descriptive, that it seems as if I were 
but etching illustrative pictiu'es for her autobiography. They are 
full of her personality. We may hear her heart beat in them, and 
see its life-blood mantling and blooming over these her ideal linea- 
ments. There was nothing of egotism in this. No one was less 
selfish or vain. But she wrote from an irrepressible impulse, with 
no thought of fame ; simply because she could not help it. The 
measure and music of imagery in verse, was the natui'al, breath- 
incf movement of her soul. 

It was not her will, but the circumstances of her career, that 
kept her imagination within these limits. The duties, anxieties, 
and occupations of a wife and mother preoccupied her. But even 
these would not have prevented her from occasionally attempting 
an outside theme, had not an unfortunate utilitarianism happened 
to surround her, discoui-aging that kind of authorship which craves 
appreciation. She had but few congenial opportunities ; and as few 
friends, sufficiently undistracted by other matters, to estimate and ani- 
mate her, even in that which she did. What we have, therefore, 



80 LAYS OF A LIFETIME. 

is simply the accidental expression of her own personal emotions ; 
this habitual warm breath of her soul, as found here and there 
still in the exquisite shape it took, when it touched the frozen sur- 
face of things without. 

The same reason assigned for their personality, accounts also for 
the pensive shade that overspreads them. She wrote from her in- 
nermost heart, and that was sometimes a very fount of melan- 
choly. A woe, when it came, never spared her. It seized her 
sensitive spirit, and thrilled along its nerves in one pervading 
agony. Only a few were aware how keenly she often suffered, be- 
cause the fact was veiled so constantly, by a bright, cheerful, even 
gay demeanor, partly the result of a conscientious resolve not to 
overshadow others with her own afflictions, and, partly, from the 
natural rebound of an elastic nature when diverted by surround- 
ing excitements. The recollections of even those Avho were most 
familiar with all that saddened her, are most vivid as to these 
gladdenino; moments. Wherever she went, her amiable and viva- 
cious ways, her pleasantry and glowing earnestness, her ingenuity 
in all the usual expedients to amuse the hour, made her the de- 
light and favorite of all. In these times, she appeared as re- 
markable for her capacity to enjoy, as she was for her suscepti- 
bility to sorrow. 

This spirit of gayety would often rise to displace even the anguish 
of physical distress. An instance of this is the following. One 
Christmas, the last of her life, a lady friend, an old schoolmate, 
who was visiting her, (and who, by the way, had been a witness 
of the prank described in her account of her school-days,) received 
a present of a box, with some promise in its appearance, but, when 
opened, found crammed with ludicrously disappointing articles. 
As the two were enjoying the spectacle strewn over the floor, and 
had, at last, guessed the author of the joke, she exclaimed, " Now 



HEAD AND HEART IMPROMPTU. 81 

we'll have some fun !" and, though not an instant free from pahi, 
and too helpless to hold a pen, she dictated these lines, to be sent 
back, which I copy as her husband then wrote them for her. 

It was Christmas Eve : not a kind heart was near, 
As I sat by my hearth, 'twixt a smile and a tear ; 
Musing over the past, and the years that had flown, 
On joys that still lingered, and all that had gone, 
When a rap at the door dashed the vision asunder ; 
'Twas an Irish girl's twp^ which is second-hand thunder; 
"Ma'am, a box at the door was left for you to-night, 
And the man did not spake, for he flashed out of sight; 
But I read by the lamp, and I read ver-r-y well 
To read such bad writing, 'twas for Mrs. P-11." 

" Set it down, my good Mary." Now who can it be ? 
Who is left in this cold world to care thus for me? 
A Christmas box ! though 'tis so careless without, 
Yet containing rich presents within, there's no don It. 
I lifted the cover, when, full in my face. 
With a flounce and an air, stared a caj) of black lace. 
Next a purse with a guinea, what kindness is meant? 
God bless the kind donor ! O pshaw, 'tis a cent. 
Here are two pair of cuffs, well, I'll take them in charge, 
And try them on too. Alas ! they're too large. 
Here are some pretty gifts, and a beautiful scarf. 
In a medley at which Heraclitus might laugh ; 
Thus encouraged, with patience, still further I'll grope. 
Since, at last, my Pandora has yielded me Hope. 
Here's a tooth-brush, a hair-brush, and pins for the wrist; 
And ribbons, done up with a magical twist. 
A bottle of perfume, a quantum of paper, 
And a queer little man in the midst of a caper. 
6 



82 LAYS OF A LIFETIME. 

Well, — I'll sit by my die-away fire, and I'll pause. 
Ill my arm-chair till midnight, or find Santa Claus. 
So I thought o'er each friend, till at last I found one, 
Who loves to fold kindness forever in fim, 
Whose life brightens on. like the evergreen leaf 
Unchanged through the solstice of joy or of grief 
^Vho. when Fortune deals falsely, or fi-iendship deceives, 
Flings her sorrows aside, as life's perishing leaves, 
And cherishing only the hopeful and green. 
Twines joy round her heart with the warmth of sixteen ; 
Well, now to my couch : I've outwatched every cinder, 
And solved the enigma, — 'Tis you, Ethelinda. 

With this, and one or two other exceptions, her poems, as here 
published, are the pictures of her mind in the seclusion of medita- 
tion and sorrow ; more frequently the latter, written as a relief and 
solace. Thoughts which most persons would have poured directly 
into another's ear, she was content to improvise upon the keys of 
her imagination, when few were nigh to overhear, and only those 
few could know, that she was filling the music with the story of her 
very life. They, sometimes, are songs as heard coming from the 
embowering retreat of her own fancy, sweet, and fragrant with its 
fresh foliage and flowers ; songs, often, as with the air and loftiness 
of psalmody, rising from the sanctuary of her hours of prayer. 

From this habit of seeking refiige and consolation in the serener 
world of her imagination, and the strong literary tendencies thus 
indicated, it must not be inferred, that, as with many similarly 
gifted, her mind was also the idle resort of an unoccupied and pur- 
poseless life. She never was one of those who lived too much in 
their dreams. She turned aside, only for recreation, or when trouble 
was nish at hand, but never loitered awav from life and duty. Vital 



HEAD AND HEART IMPROMPTU. 83 

and necessary to her as it was, poetry was never foremost. It was 
her breath, not herself. She felt the weight and momentum of her 
being, strong within her. She felt invigorated with a purpose, and 
always moved as if under the urgency of a work that was to be 
performed. Her nature had grown into a strength too real to be 
thus frittered and dreamed away. Home-life, with its fireside real- 
ities of husband, children, domestic cares, duties and employments, 
filled her heart, and glowed about her steps. To all this,- poetry 
was incidental ; as I say, only the vitalizing breath of this grander, 
practical character. 

Here is a sweet picture of herself, after the close of a household 
day. While her husband and his brother, near by, are quietly 
enjoying their newspapers, she puts aside her work, to rhyme a 
playful greeting to a long absent and favorite brother-in-law. 

It is evening, dear Sam, C ami .T are at home. 

And the bright lamp is cheering our dear -'little room." 

And as J has one paper, and C — — the other, 

I have nothing to do but to think of my brother. 

My basket is near, but I'm sure I can't sew. 

So, needles and muslin, this evening adieu. 

I've been striving to-day, (like an excellent wife,) 

To blend both the useful and " dulee " of life. 

I've been pickling, preserving, and quite in a steiv, 

Now, bothered by baby, then thinking of you ; 

For, bee-like, a thought has stol'n over my brain. 

That you care very little to see us again. 

A stinging thought, Sam, which I'll crush if you'll come, 

And bring back the honey of hearts to our home. 

O! don't stay any longer; for poor Carlo lies 

On the door-mat, with naught to amuse him but flies; 



84 LAYS OF A LIFETIME. 

And pen, ink, and books, undisturbed on the shelf. 
Refuse to be social with one but yoiirself, 
And paper looks blank, and our cheerfulness flown, 
For we feel as a linlc from our heart's chain had gone. 

In this dull town of ours, I have little to " tell ;" 

I've seen none of your cronies, but Mr. Ud 

And him at the last evening's lecture I saw, 

Intent upon Solomon Southwick and law. 

When endeav'ring to prove that our judicial rule?, 

Flow not from Athenian, but Mosaic schools. 

I loved that old man, for rev'rend's the form. 

That can meet wintry age unbowed by its storm ; 

Though Time sits on his brow like a tyrant, and told 

A withering tale that such men could grow old ; 

Yet mind grappled with years, miscathed by a care. 

For the greenness and beauty of Wisdom were there. 

Though the music of Milton flowed sweet from his tongue, 

He proved that more sweetly Isaiah had sung, 

And that Dante a rapture to sense might impart, 

But David, alone, swept the strings of the heart. 

And so calm was the flow of the lecturer's mind. 

His reas'ning so lucid, and thoughts so refined, 

That I rose from philosophy's ocean impearled 

With the gems of a purer and holier world. 

Give my love to dear father and mother, and say 

1 don't write such episodes every day ; 

But you know, Sam, when nature and feelings are tired, 

The mind in reaction is often inspired. 

But the Pythian draught is exhausted, and now 

Dull slumber is passing her wand o'er mv brow. 



HEAD AND HEART IMPROMPTU. 85 

My pen and ink fail me, my senses are dumb, 

So I'll go to bed, Samuel, and dream you have come. 

Yet one word at parting; a blessing, a prayer, 

That life may be sprinkled so lightly with care, 

Like dust on the butterfly's wing, every woe 

May soften, not shadow, the brilliance below. 

But mem'ry is with me, a tear's in my eye. 

For my heart's with my childhood, — dear Samuel, good-bye. 

This was the recreation of a few moments. But how happy she 
was, when she loosed her imagination for a higher flight. It seemed, 
at times, in the facility with which she wrote, especially after her 
thoughts had been enriched by long repression, as if she had but to 
touch her pen, and "the numbers came." Imagery occurred almost 
too easily, often leading her to crowd figures too thickly and too fast 
one upon another. As in the examples quoted above, she would 
frequently conceive and write on the instant ; even in the midst of 
an expectant company, and the buzz of their conversation. She 
undervalued these so much, as to destroy a number of them ; and 
most of the group here appended have been handed to me, by those 
who did value and so secured them. By placing them thus together, 
her mind is pleasingly displayed, with its lighter fringe of beauty. 

In the compositions which follow this group, a glimpse is caught 
of her heart, radiating, beyond her family circle, into the thinner 
atmosphere of friendship, and especially in that most touching of 
all its expressions, the tenderness which appreciates another's grief. 
It was her practice, when a friend met with a bereavement, instead 
of inditing the usual, and necessarily superficial, note of condolence, 
to send out her own heart in verse, as it throbbed in imaginary con- 
tact with the occasion of the suffering. 

These two kinds, really so dissimilar, I put together here, be- 



86 LAYS OF A LIFETIME. 

cause of certain parallel cliaracteristics : the one, a cluster of Im-. 
provisations, like sparks struck from the flint of passing incidents, 
showing the prompt and flashing readiness of her intellect ; the 
other, a cluster of Elegies, impromptus of the heart, revealing the 
quickness of its sympathies, and instant perception of all the bitter- 
ness of a woe. 



HEAD AND HEAKT IMPROMPTU. 87 



TO A FADED FLOWEl!. 

IMPROMPTU, WRITTEN AFTER A PARTY. 

Come to my heart ! in beauty come ! 

Sleep on its pulse my withering flower ; 
Thou'rt loveliest in thy fading bloom, 

And dearest in thy drooping hour. 
0, ever thus my spirit twines 

Round joys that soonest pass away, 
'Twas born to cling, like ivy vines. 
To ruin and decay. 

Then rest thee here ; this heart shall be 
Thy pure and lonely burial spot, 

The grave of feeling and of thee, 
Of hopes that share this blighted lot. 

Come to my heart ! and if it moves 
With its wild pulse one faded leaf, 

I'll speak to thee, as one that loves. 
And tell thee of my grief. 

I twined thee in my hair to-night, 
It was an hour of mirth and glee ; 



LAYS OF A LIFETIME. 

And many deemed my spirit light, 
But all ! the truth I'll whisper thee. 

They knew not, that the heart could fling 
A fragrance in its wounded hour, 

Like the faint perfume hovering 

Round thee, my faded flower ! 

Tell not the world, that griefs beguile 
The careless heart I'm wont to bear ; 

For when we know and scorn its smile, 
who would ever ask its tear ! 

Yet is it hard to hide my grief, 

And strive to veil the spirit's gloom, 

When I am like thee, blighted leaf. 

Within a world of bloom ! 



HEAD AND HEART IMPROMPTU. 89 



IMPROMPTU. 

WRITTEN, ON RETURNING AN OFFERING OF BRYANT's POEMS, BE- 
NEATH THE AUTOGRAPH OF THE AUTHOR. 

Dear ladj, on this page is graven 

The poet's gift and line, 
And ! 'tis wrong when thus 'twas given, 

To call the offering mine. 

The humming-bird will choose its flower, 

'Mid summei buds entwined, 
And every poet hath the power 

To know his kindred mind. 

For though each thought be like the chain 

Philosophy unfurled. 
Linking a moment life and pain 

Unto a better world ; 

I feel, that the electric fire 

Was never meant for me ; 
The flame that mantles round a spire. 

Will pass the wild-rose tree. 



90 LAYS OF A LIFETIME. 

Yet memory hath her treasure spot ; 

Hid from the careless eye, 
Where, breathing of the unforgot, 

My sacred relics lie. 

There, far from human sight or praise, 

I love those gifts to bind, 
And disinter, on rainy days, 

Pompeiis of the mind. 

I cannot place thy gift with these, 
Though prized, it is denied ; 

As flowers we'd kiss, some charming breeze 
Forever blows aside. 

Yet feeling still some trophy brings, 

Past kindness to recall ; 
For memory hath a thousand wings. 

And love can plume them all. 

The vines that clasp our cottage wall, 
The stream, the rugged shore. 

The wooded- walk, the rock, the fall, 
think of them once more. 

For I am like the Banian tree, 

My heart is rooted there ; 
And wandering thoughts those bi'anches be, 

That find a home elsewhere. 



HEAD AND HEART IMPROMPTU. 91 



IMPROMPTU, TO NINA. 

ON A FLOWER FROM HER FATHER's GRAVE. 

Thy cheek, sweet girl, is yet too fair, 
Thy youthful eye too bright, 

For grief to fling a single care 
Athwart its gentle light. 

The task is left for after years, 

"When thou shalt turn aside. 
As many a thought shall trace, in tears, 

The hour "that father died." 

When for the beggar at the door 
I heard thy young lip plead, 
" Oh, give her something, mother, more, 
She says her father's dead ;^' 

I knew that life would turn that thought 
To tears, and bid them flow, 

When feeling to thy heart had taught. 
What is but memory now. 



92 LAYS OF A LlFETIMi;. 

When years enfold the forest trunk, 
Its graven names depart, 

Yet lost not, — deeper tliey have sunk, 
To rest upon its heart. 

Nor time can take the love from thee, 

Thine infancy revealed ; 
Though like the name upon the tree, 

From every eye concealed. 

And often wilt thou turn from mirth. 
And all that life hath won, 

To train bright flowers above the earth 
That liidos that buried one. 

And be it so : and o'er thy breast 
When holy thoughts shall wave ; 

0, let their shadoAV gently rest 
Upon ''dear fiither's " grave. 



HEAD AND HEART IMPllOMl'TU. 93 



IMPROMPTU. 

•• T ONOE HAD FRIENDS, A THOUSAND FRIENDS." 

''A THOUSAND friends!" a thousand friends! ah, that can never be, 
Though thousands sun thy path with smiles, their warmth is not 

with thee, 
They glance upon the heart, but leave no kindly feelings there, 
To scatter rose-leaves o'er the soul, when tempest-shook by care. 

A "chosen few," but few indeed; for they must love alone, 
Who fling beyond the kindred chain a link to more than one ; 
When life is bright, we give them then its little all of mirth. 
And trust them thus far, fearlessly, and win them to our hearth. 

But who would fling the love of soul, the foliage of the heart. 
Around a " chosen few," who place their hopes and love apart ! 
/Vh, rather let it cluster yet, luxuriant and alone. 
Or rear it like the prophet's vine, to shade the chosen one. 

And when it withers, when it fades in sadness and in gloom. 
And the shrunk heart's a blighted leaf within a world of bloom, 
Then on my withering feelings lie, one dew-drop pure and clear, 
And only one, a glittering one. Beloved, give a tear. 



94 LAYS OF A LIFETIME. 



IMPROMPTU. 

WRITTEN ON THE BLANK LEAF UF A VOLUME OF SERMONS. 

FOR a world that knows no care, 
A brighter, happier, purer sphere, 

Where sighs are lost in grateful prayer. 
And griefs forgot that wound us here. 

I'd rather be a summer flower, 

A passing cloud, a fading bow, 
All, any thing whose life's an hour, 

Than live for years, and feel as now. 

Yet all within us, all around, 

Tell of a time, when hearts shall break 

The "chain wherewith we're darkly bound," 
And cease to beat, and cease to ache. 

Had I the Christian's holy power. 
To gild th' horizon of my years. 

Peace yet should mark the passing hour, 
And only rapture speak in tears. 



HEAP AND HEART IMPROMPTU. 95 



IMPROMPTU. 



■ ON ACCEPTING A COPY OF ZIMMERMAN, BUT RETURNING A 
BREAST-PIN. 

My bosom will not need this gem, 
To call tliee to its thoughts again ; 
For " Solitude "^ where'er thou art, 
Will bring thee to a lonely heart. 

blame me not, time cannot steal 
From hearts like ours the bliss to feel: 
To feel, though torn for years away. 
As if we parted yesterday. 

Thought be the chain that binds thee here, 
My own bright gem, our partmg tear, 
And that alone the pledge must be, 
Though even you should frown on me. 



96 



LAYS OF A LIFETIME. 



THE TWILIGHT HOUR. 

WRITTEN" IX AX ALBUM. 

(.) WEEP, my love, when twilight's hour 
Has bathed in dew the violet flower ; 
For, then the sacred tear that's given 
Shall, with the dew-drop, rise to heaven. 
Brightly glowing, sparkling there, 
'Twill gem some Seraph's golden hair, 
Or rest upon some heavenly flower ; 
Then weep, my love, at twilight's hour. 

Though now mv heart be licrht and free. 
And buoyant as love's minstrelsy. 
Yet tears will dim the briorhtest eve. 
And sorrows robe its witchery : 
And o'er the dewy lip will play 
Sighs which the world can't chase away : 
For though the heart may rest on flowers, 
The bosom has its twilight hours. 

When the shades of sorrow stealing 
O'er the breast, its bliss concealing ; 
When joy but sheds it? ling'ring beam, 
To cast o'er woe that mellow gleam 



HEAD AND HEART IMPROMPTU. 97 

That cherubs snatch from smiling heaven. 
To robe in light the clouds of even : 
When sighs breathe sweets, tears rapture pour, 
The bosom has its twilight hour. 

When dear hope gilds the clouds of sorrow, 

As token of a brilliant morrow, 

Sighs leave the heart, and dare to sip 

The fragrance of youth's balmy lip ; 

When mem'ry's dew, with blessings fraught. 

Freshens all the flowers of thought, 

When sighs breathe sweets, tears rapture pour, 

The bosom has its twilight hour. 

But think you not, that beauty's sigh 

Will on evening's zephyr fly. 

And wander in ethereal blue, 

Beyond the regions of the dew ? 

There sweeping o'er some angel's lyre, 

Wakening joy and holy fire, 

Till Heaven's sweet minstrels own its power, 

And bless the sigh of twilight's hour. 

'Twill play around some seraph's form ; 
But never, never, wing the storm. 
Sweet herald ! no : thou'lt come at even, 
To bring us peace and love of Heaven ; 
Take from the rose its fragrant charm, 
Woo other sighs from beauty warm, 
Or bear from earth some lovely flower. 
That died to hallow twilight's hour. 



!'^ LAYS OF A LIFETIME. 



TO A YOUNG FRIEND. 

" Perchance my harp and heart have lost a string 
And both may jar ; it may be, that in vain 
I may essay, as 1 have once, to sing. 

* * * * I care not ; so it fling 
Forgetfulness around me, it shall seem 

To me, though to none else, a not ungrateful theme." 

Byron, 

My brow will be changed ere we meet again, 
And the flush of ray cheek be pallid with care, 

And thou shalt gaze on my dark lash in vain, 
For the joyous spirit that rested there. 

Thou art gone, — we shall meet, — but not till years 
Shall have swept away, with their reckless wing, 

That freshness of feeling the spirit wears, 
Ere the blushes it wreathes are withering. 

We shall meet. But Time ! Your cold finger flings 
Blighted flowers in our path for young life to wear ; 

You will gather its wild imaginings. 

But what will you have when you take them ? A Tear. 



HEAD AND HEART IMPROMPTU. 99 

You come ! and the smile from the lip must part ; 

You come ! and passion must ebb at your will ; 
You come ! but oh, not to the troubled heart, 

To say to the flood of its grief,— " Be still!" 

There are tears, sad tears, for the eye to shed ; 

There are tears, for the hour of midnight prayer ; 
There are tears, for the grave of the early dead ; 

We gather enjoyment, — and tears are there. 

They dampen the brow, ere the waving curls 
That shadow its whiteness, of age hath told ; 

While health on the cheek its banner unfurls, 
And hope is asleep on its crimson fold. 

Thou art gone,— we shall meet, — but not till years 
Shall have swept away, with their reckless wing, 

That fi-eshness of feeling the spirit wears, 
Ere the blushes it wreathes are withering. 



100 



LAYS OF A LIFETIME. 



ON THE DEATH OF W. \L 

INFANT SON OF J. H. S. 

" ' Wherefore should T fast ; can I briiig him back again. I shtUl go to him, but he 
shall not return to me.' This is evidently spoken by the Psalmist, as a gi-ound of 
comfort. The thought of going where his child had gone, consoled him under the 
present affliction. Yet it could have been no source of consolation to him, if he 
had not expected to meet and recognize his child again; but when he says, I shall 
go to him, we undei-stand him to say, I shall see him again, I shall Inotc him again. 
I shall embrace him again, and we then vmdei'stand how he was comforted. 

" Can the pious mother ' forget her child.' when she has laid its little form in the 
gi-ound, and feels that ' of such is the kingdom of heaven V Let her not sorrow as 
tiiose who have no hope ; she shall po to him," — Dr. I)ork o>» the " Jiecopnition of Fr!tinh 
in another World." 

Tnou hast a home, my boy, above the strife 
And all the tmnult of the changing hour ; 

Yet what is earth without thee, what is life? 
The drooping calyx of a liillen flower. 

Thy bird upon its perch is gaily singing ; 

Thy books, thy toys, all home is filled with thee : 
Even thy pencil line the past is bringing. 

To touch the heart whose pulse is memory. 



HEAD AND HEART IMPROMPTU, 101 

At morn I miss thee, when from dreams I start, 
As "dear mother" seems to meet my ear, 

Till grief is whisp'ring to my wounded heart, 
That death has left me nothing, — but her tear. 

But most we mourn thee, when the shadows gather 
In the dim twilight round our lonely home ; 

The eye that watched the distance for its father : 
And the flushed lip that shouted, "He has come." 

Thy Bible yet is resting on its stand. 

And calls the many hours when thou hast stood 

Close by my side, and as thy little hand 
Placed its slight mark, would question me of goo<l. 

Was it for death my love each thought was wreathing? 

My mind a trellis to thine own I gave. 
For death amid its deep luxuriance breathing, 

To hurl its beauty to a sunken grave? 

There is a hush upon the clouded air. 

When the deep thunder rolls along the sky, 

And thus Avill feeling tremble into prayer. 
And gather calmness from intensity. 

Till o'er its earthliness the spirit bending 

A bright horizon around dust is spread ; 
With finite love infinitv is blending. 

And faith hath won its halo for the dead. 

My heart dawned o'er thine infancy, while love 
Tinted the rose-bud that it lingered on, 



102 LAYS OF A LIFETIME. 

Aud from the clustering shades of thought above 
The flower is fondly turning to its sun. 

Aud it ^-ill turn forever. God is spreading 
That glorious shadow o'er my drooping eye ; 

And every dream of thee that night is shedding. 
Falls like bright leaves from thine eternity. 

Yet shall we meet, and heaven restore my own. 
Though but a sparkle 'mid its countless rays : 

Beauty that I may separate a tone, 

A cadence, from its thrilling hymn of praise, 

Joy to my heart, thou'rt but a dew-drop lifted 
To swell the fount of happiness on hisjh, 

A snow-flake from an icy world that's drifted. 
To melt beneath the smile of Deitv. 



HEAD AND HEART IMPROMPTU. 108 



ON THE DEATH OF DR. S. C, 

THE OLDEST PHYSICIAN OF THE VILLAGE, AND FOUNDER OF ITS TEMPERANCE 

SOCIETY. 

"Dust unto dust!" and to its God 

Earth has resigned the trust He gave ; 
Yet mem'rj shrines that burial sod, 

And marks it as the good man's grave. 

And mourn we o'er that buried one? 

0, take the gathering clouds of care, 
And fling them round life's setting sun, 

And lose them in the glory there : 

Glory ! that needs no storied pen. 

For one who never asked for fame, 
Yet winning from his fellow-men 

The glory of an honest name. 

Go learn it at the cottage hearth. 

And in the peace that hovers there ; 
And when night lifts the thoughts from earth, 

'Tis breathed, in blessing and in prayer, 

For him, that sought the erring soul, 
And led it from guilt's darkened road. 



104 LAYS OF A LIFETIME.. 

Winning the tempted from his boAvl 
Back to himself, — his home, — his God. 

And even they, his kindness wooed 
But vainly from the cup of shame, 

Will yet by feeling half subdued 
In softer accents breathe his name. 

For mountain rocks will shoAv, Avhen cleft, 
The impress of some buried iloAver ; 

And in the hardest heart is left 
The record of its guiltless hour. 

And yet with such snnplicity 

Of heart, was action bound the while, 

That children fondly climbed that knee, 
To meet a welcome and a smile. 

And when they heard his voice no more, 
In little bands I've seen them come. 

And point the stranger to his door, 

And whisper, "that was once his home," 

He lived till age had crowned with snoAVS 
His brow ; yet, like the Syrian hill, * 

Amid the waste of life he rose, 

And verdure clasped his bosom still. 

He died, as dies the forest tree, 

Round which the deathless ivy twined, 

Scathed by thy stroke, Mortality, 
Yet foliased with immortal mind. 



HEAD AND HEART IMPROMPTU. 105 



ON THE DEATH OF AN INFANT SON OF E. G. S. 

"The mother wept her first-born, for its little soul, like other tones, had been dis- 
sipated in the atmosphere of life. Death had breathed upon its butterfly being, 
and it rose from the world's tempestuous storms into the ever-peaceful ether ; from 
the flowers of earth, to the flowers of paradise." — From the German of Jean Paul 

RiCHTER. 

Dream of my bosom ! to the darkness stealing, 
Why didst thou come with such sweet prophecy? 

To wander o'er the heart's ungathered feeling, 
And wake my love to smile on it, and die? 

When autumn winds are breathing round our dwelling, 
And sweep the last leaf from the forest tree, 

Oh, how does mem'ry, in our bosoms swelling, 

Bring back the death- hour that hath gathered thee. 

What couldst thou win from earth, thou gentle spirit, 
That thy pure essence with its dust combined? 

Joy? that an unfledged soul could not inherit 
A loftier breathing of omniscient mind ? 



106 LAYS OF A LIFETIME. 

Pain passed thy brow, and closed thine eye, when dying 
Played with thy heart, and fluttered on thy breath ; 

Dimmed the last smile that flickered 'neath its sighino- : 
What couldst thou win, my boy, from life but death ? 

The cloud hath taught me, as its drop descending 
To earth shall filter through each rocky vein, 

With darker elements its nature blending. 
To flash a jewel when it's sought again. 

Life's trial o'er, — my beautiful I from earth 

And from the grave's deep mine thy soul hath risen ; 

And immortality from mortal birth 

Has linketl it to the spirit gems of heaven. 



HEAD AND HEART IMPROMPTU. 107 



ON THE DEATH OF W. M. W. 

WHO DIED IN A DISTANT CITY WHERE HE HAD GONE FOR THE BENEFIT OF 

HIS HEALTH. 

Alone to die ! the loved away, 

And none the tear to shed! 
^o heart to soothe, or lip to praj. 

Or mourn for him when dead. 
While thoughts of home came but to shroud 

Its memory in gloom, 
Where was its loved, to ray the cloud 

That hovers round the tomb? 

Alone with death! who could blame, 

If even faith burned dim ? 
But holy thoughts like "angels came, 

And ministered to him." 
They gently hushed the parting breath, 

Nor bade his smile depart ; 
Still lingered on the shades of death, 

That twilight of the heart. 



108 LAYS OF A LIFETIME. 

And strangers too, — the kind, the good, — 

Drew 'round that fading eye ; 
For, linked in Christian brotherhood, 

They saw a brother die. 
And prayer through Him who died to save, 

Each lip was breathing 'round ; 
Prayer hallowed too the stranger's grave, 

And made it holy ground. 

We bless them from our home afar, 

Though life be dark and lone, 
Yet o'er its night there moves one star, 

God's love that in them shone. 
Strangers ! and yet for them has risen 

The spirit's grateful prayer. 
Unknown on earth to meet in heaven, — 

There are no strangers there. 



HEAD AND HEART IMPROMPTU. 109 



LINES, 

SUGGESTED BY A DESCRIPTION OF THE DEATH- BED OF , WHO DIED IN 

THE TWENTIETH YEAR OF HER AGE. 

Come from the world ! its wealth, its pomp, its power. 

Come from the glare of the miquiet day 1 
To the lone hearth, where grief has touched the hour, 

With thoughts too deep to pass from earth away. 

Come to the dying ! where fond hearts are bowed, 
As life's dim twilight gathers round the eye ; 

And as the soul wanes gently from its cloud, 
Learn how the young, the beautiful can die. 

Gently that form, as if for night's repose, 

Hath sunk upon its couch ; and, it would seem, 

Past, Present, Future, all in beauty rose, 

And wreathed the mem'ry with their treasured dream. 

The eye is shadowed, and the last, last tear 
From the deep fount of earthly love has risen : 

Yet, touched by faith, it ' angs o'er human fear, 
A glittering covenant 'twixt earth and Heaven. 

And words are stealing from the heart o'erfraught 
With its glad promise, struggling to be free, 



110 LAYS OF A LIFETIME. 

A murmur, as the lifted wave of thought 
Dashes the shore of vast eternity. 

"Father! I'm dying; yet, ere life shall wane, 
While my heart wrestles with its agony. 
One thought has snatched the victory from pain. 
My Saviour suffered more than this for me. 

" Mother ! upon thy bosom let me lie, 

Life placed me there, and there shall life be riven. 
Dear husband ! fiither ! kiss me ere I die, 

And brother, meet the one you love in Heaven." 

And this is Death : 'tis triumph ! triumph sought 
And won from heaven on the bended knee, 

And sec how brightly springs the dying thought, 
A cypress waving o'er mortality. 

When the world laid its smile upon her heart. 

And its talse hope, as with a spell, had bound it, 

Keligion moved amid its depths apart, 

A gulf-stream warmer than the ocean round it. 

Happy in life, she yet could dream of death ; 

Beneath the shadow of a world in flower. 
Twine earthly sympathies with holy faith. 

And chasten daily action by its power. 

'Twas mind enfranchised, springing from the strife, 
The creeping sorrows of this world of care : 

A silk-worm beiuij;, blending death and life 
In the same glorious winding-sheet of prayer. 



VJ. 



ECHOES OF FOOTSTEPS DEPARTING. 

There is to me an indescribable beauty, in thus viewing a soul 
in the perspective of its own embowering dreams, especially wlien, 
as at this point, the vista begins to melt into the haze and mystery 
of the other world. Now comes appropriately the last and grand- 
est aspect of all, and one never to be found in many a nature other- 
wise reaching broadly and distantly into some of the finest displays 
of human excellence. Religion is the golden glory which terminates 
this imier view. If the insight stop short of it, the background of 
a character can be naught but a cold vacuum ; if, on the contrary, 
it also appear, there is the end, and yet not the end,— a warm, rich- 
hued atmosphere, but fathomless as the eternity into which it leads, 
and with which it mindes. 

This final phase of all character, as it appeared in Sophia, I have 
reserved until the final days of her life. Much of it lias been anti- 
cipated already, in this introspection of hei- heart. All her musings 
are tinted, more or less, as were all her actions, with a relio-ious 
li.irht. In those that follow, the colors are only deeper and more 



112 



LAYS OF A LIFETIME. 



defined, I have choseu this, as the most fitting period for their 
witness, not onlj because of their vicinity in idea to the workl to 
come, but because also the faith that inspired them, then shone in 
its greatest brightness ; for, her career of many sorrows rose to 
a very climax of agony, just before her soul culminated into ever- 
lasting joy. 

Her death was a romance of mental experiences. She seemed 
borne out of life, more by doom than disease. Unlike others, who 
are either struck down in an instant, or gradually sickened and 
wasted into the grave, she was touched with it in her maturity 
and bloom ; and it lay like a tardy banc close to her heart, long 
before that bloom fiided or her strength failed. The greater part of 
this time, she knew her peril, but did not realize, till much later, 
that her fate was sealed. Tlien, the sight of her nature, so full 
and vigorous, quivering beneath the shock of the cruel truth as it 
flashed upon her, with the thousand shades of fear and hope, and 
the endless revulsions of feeling that followed, made this peculiar 
spectacle of health in death, and death in health, appear drawn out 
into an almost dramatic length of struggle and suspense, till the 
catastrophe which came at last. 

It had fastened like an asp upon her fair bosom, long before she 
knew it ; and only when she found that it grew by what it fed on, 
did she seek riddance of the ''mortal wretch." But the painless 
thing went on increasing, baffling every remedy, and sending at last 
the chill dread all through her, that it might be death. What an 
unconscious tragedy she wrote, in the letters that fill this period ! 
I was handed the packet containing them, with the injunction, that 
they were too sacred for the public eye ; and as I opened and read 
them, one by one, they seemed like so many successive scenes in a 
career perplexed and disheartened by the adverse turns of its des- 
tiny. I coulcl see her, nearly all this time, moving yet in the ripe- 



ECHOES OF FOOTSTEPS DEPARTING. 



113 



ness and beauty of her wouianhood, in the vigor of an untainted 
constitution, with her mind in full-orbed brightness, with her children 
prattling around her, with her husband battling the world for her 
and them, with every thing to make life most vivid and precious, 
and to make her cling to it though it were even girt with fire. 
After that, I could see her, when it did become girt with fire, as the 
inextinguishable spark, that lay smouldering so long unfelt near her 
heart, burst forth at last, encircling it with flame ;— and then she did 
cling to life. 

It was not unfaithful ; it was natural. Give faith and hope their 
utmost power, and they cannot annul nature. The more full and 
strong the life, the more it will shi-ink from death ; the wider and 
deeper its Banian nature has struck its roots, the more terrible is 
the torture of its plucking up. 

These letters thus carry me back into those years, and I feel over- 
come by the inexpressible pathos of the story they relate : a sweet 
and devoted spirit, waiting so tearfully and hopefully, in her doubt 
and ignorance, and the dreadful time of suffering ever drawing near ! 
They commence with the first apprehension she felt ; and it is merely 
alluded to, amid the joyous messages of her heart to a distant and 
beloved sister. But, after this, I can see the shadows of her soul 
gradually deepening across each page ; even the chirography at 
last losing its vigor, and fading into the weak and trembling char- 
acters of a hand become almost helpless. Nobly, gloriously indeed 
does she unfold her being, through them all. It is pictured, in 
rising and falling hopes, in touching words of resignation, in bursts 
of deep affection, in expressions of the keenest sensibility to the 
mercies surrounding her, in the glowing exhibition, in every line, of 
a rich and manifold Christian character. 

But I anticipate the brief narrative. Her physician becoming 
alai-med at the ill- success of his own skill, advised her to consult 



114 LAYS OF A LIFETIME. 

Dr. , tlie ouiiuent surgeon. lie was sent for and soon 

called to see her ; and how interesting she looked, as she stood 
in pensive grace before him. 

After a moment's consideration, he turned, and, without a word, 
left the room. One of those present followed him, inquiring anxi- 
ously : " What do you think of my sister's case?" He looked back, 
his countenance full of agitation, and asked, " How many children 
has she?" Upon his re-entering the room, Sophia herself said: 
" Speak to me, if you please, with all the plainness that you 
would, to one of your own students. I have strength to bear it." 
He replied, raising his hands emphatically, "My dear lady, there 
IS no hope for you." She listened calmly, and asked if an 
operation would not save her. " I will submit to it immediately, 
for my children's sake." Her case was soon after referred to a 
consultation of surgeons. 

"Then, E ," she writes, "for the first time I seemed to 

realize my situation. Then I felt, that I was indeed ill, and, as 
soon as he left me, wept bitterly. Never did I have so dark an 
hour. * * * I believe I do not dread the operation so much 
as the loss of time to my family, for they say it will be three 
months before I can use my arm after it. I feel well, and look, 
they say, well, and cannot but hope that I may again be well. * 

* * For my children and dearest husband, I hope to live. Oh, 
they are the ties that come between my soul and resignation, and 
fasten me to earth. Oh, pray for me, my sister, that if this cup 
may not pass from me, I may be submissive." Shortly after, she 
writes again : " There is no longer any doubt. A consultation of 
surgeons have decided, that an operation can do me no good. 

* * * ! the joy I felt, when I thought that dreadful opera- 
tion would relieve me !" 

Poor, sweet creature, how she clunij to life ! She did indeed 



ECHOES OF FOOTSTEPS DEPARTING. 115 

look well. Up to this moment, she was the picture of rosy health, 
and not a pang had jet crossed her bosom. Had she not reason 
to shrink fi'om the sure abjss of agony yawning to receive her I 
It was so well understood that her fate was sealed, that, whenever 
she appeared at church, the minister offered the prayer for a sick 
person. To her sensitive spirit, it must have sounded like the 
opening of her own funeral service. 

But a more vivid intimation was in store for her. In walking 
across the room one day, she suddenly fell insensible to the floor. 
It was the first cancer pain, — "the beginning only of evils," said 
her physician. Then it came, that long rush of agony. In a few 
months, the cancer had redoubled itself, and began to cripple her 
right arm. I cannot forbear copying the first sentence of her last 
letter, written in a hand hardly recognizable : "I write with such 
extreme difficulty, that it will be only by great exertion I can make 
myself intelligible. My arm is in a sling, and I am forbidden to 
use it, but the wish to say a word to you, before it ' forget its 
cunning,' has made me transgress." 

* * * Even now she does not wholly despair. " Yet I do 
not feel hopeless. There is a God who can say to me, even now, 
' Be thou whole,' and my side shall be restored, ' like as the 
other.'" 

"I soon observed," says one, "a change in her character. It 
was difficult to describe it. Every characteristic remained the 
same : the same tender, confiding disposition, the same disin- 
terested affection, the same gentle submission, the same gratefiil 
appreciation of any petty sacrifice others were making for her, the 
same simplicity, almost naivete of expression, and the same beau- 
tiful cheerfulness. Yet all seemed cha.nged. There was a light 
resting upon them, which deepened and saddened all. Her whole 
being seemed bathed in the hues of Heaven. * * * Heart and 



116 LAYS OF A LIFETIME, 

intellect, in health ever refined, now appeared almost sublimated. 
The fiery trial through which she was passing, seemed already to 
have consumed the dross." 

But long before her disease took its most cruel form, the more 
native traits of her character shone conspicuously. " I have days 
of pain and restlessness," she once said, " yet I feel cheerful, 
and at times so buoyant as to forget I have a 

' l^aby at my breast 
That sucks the nurse asleep,' 

as Cleopatra says." In her hours of pain, she preferred being 
alone. " It would only add to my suiFerings to see you sharing 
them Avith me." When her friends were admitted, so completely 
were these veiled, and all allusion to them avoided, that it was 
difficult to realize she had them. Her conversation would be full 
of its former brilliance, the color would suffuse her cheek, and 
her eye brighten. They would say, " How well she looks," but, 
the moment the door was shut, her head would droop, her eye 
close, and the paleness of exhausted nature creep over her face. 
"They came from kindness," she would say, "it would be a poor 
return to send them away saddened. Why should they associate 
my sick chamber with gloom when it is crowded with blessings?" 

I have here a bright impulse of her heart, as it was Avritten 
to a young lady who one day left her some flowers : 

A step ill the entry, a knock at my door ; 
" O, dear !" T exclaimed, " there's a Doctor once more ;" 
I'm wearied to death, with the troublesome things. 
O ! would I were dove-like, and only had wings, 
Or could creep to some spot where the summer flowers wave. 
And weave, like the silk-worm, my own little grave : 



ECHOES OF FOOTSTEPS DEPARTING. 117 

Content with the thraldom that Nature had woven, 
Till the wings should put forth, that would lift me to Heaven. 
Ah ! life is ^Eolian, and Doctors can bind 
The loose harp-strings, and trust them again to the wind ; 
Yet, ere the sweet chimings of health are restored, 
A God must breathe o'er them, and tune every chord. 
" Come in then," said I, though 1 felt quite put out, 
Nor dreamed you, sweet girl, what I pouted about. 
For you came, like the Hpring to my bleak wintry hours, 
And left all your memory written in flowers. 
To the night of my heart, like a dream of its day, 
Or a link to a world that is passing away. 

My task does not extend to a portrayal of those characteristics 
which she herself reveals. The beauty of her religious being, the 
earnest of 

"The faith that grew brightest in suffering, 
The chastened spirit ; yet cheerful the while, 
The broken heart, and the trusting smile," 

may be perceived in almost all her poems, but especially in these 
that I have gathered under the arch of this overhanging doom, like 
diamonds in the dark, to flash upward the light they once borrowed 
from Heaven. 



118 



LAYS UF A LIFETIME. 



SUNDAY EVENING. 

'• When ovo is pui-pliiig cliff and cave, 

Thoughts of the heart, liow soft ye flow! 

***** 

Then all, b}' chance or fate removed, 

Like spirits crowd upon the eye ; 
The few we liked, — the one we loved ; 

And the whole heart is memory." 

Crolv. 

My God, another day of Thine 

Is added to the many given ! 
O, has my spirit graved a line, " 

Its angel may record in Heaven? 

Ah, no ! but for redeeming love, 

Sad, sad the page of life I'm tm-ning ; 

With sorro^ving thoughts unknown above, 
I linger o'er the woe I'm learning. 

But touch my spirit, Saviour ! give 

Thy grace to cheer life's darkened pages ; 

And l)i(l my heart's crushed tendrils live. 
Entwined around thv Rock of Ages. 



ECHOES OF FOOTSTEPS DEPARTING. HI* 

VVheii mcm'ry, like the ark's lone bird, 

Sweeps o'er the past, and asks its cherished, 

And only wins a look, — a word, — 

A few bright leaves that have not perished ! 

0, if the wearied spirit bring 

To Thee its hope, — to Thee its sorrow, 
Wilt Thou not smooth its ruffled wing, 

And guard it for a brighter morrow?"^ 

Till o'er this wilderness of care 

The waste of feelings, wronged and slighted, 
Shall all the holy dew of prayer, 

And lift fi'om earth what earth has blighted. 

In happier days, in sadder hours, 

Such trusting thoughts to Thee have risen ; 

Thoughts that have sprung life's desert flowers ! 
Unseen by all, — yet watched by Heaven. 



120 



LAYS OF A LIFETIME. 



THE CONFIRMATION AT ST. 



" Granting us in this world knowledge of Thy truth, and in the world to come 
life everlasting." — Prayer-Book. 



They come ! they crowd the altar ! and aside 
From earth, Heaven claims the consecrated hour ; 

The soul has dropped its vanity and pride, 
Life's outer leaves ! the spirit is in flower ! 

And bends to Thee, God ! as to its sun. 

Yielding its fi-agrance, as it's shone upon. 

Childhood with pleading lip ! the prayer of youth 
That hath a hold on Heaven ! that is so pure. 

So full of confidence, and hope, and truth. 
And clings with such fond energy, as sure 

Of its protection, — and the gentle tone 

Of woman ! asking strength beyond her own. 



ECHOES OF FOOTSTEPS DEPARTING. 1-1 

If from the tumult of the ebbing past, 

A wearied one here sighs to be forgiven ; 
And 'neath the shadow of a life o'ercast, 

Renews its earliest covenant with heaven, 
And at this altar, Lord, on bended knee, 
Forsake his idols, and bow down to Thee : 

Speak ! as from Sinai, — from his sorrows rude. 
Let suffering flash conviction ! If his climb 

Hath been to Thee, in each vicissitude, 

And thus, grief-sandalled, worn a path through time. 

Even to this altar, there the cloud be riven ! 

Part the "thick darkness" Avith the Laws of Heaven. 

The Prayer-Book in each hand ! the truths that stole 
Around them, as the Spirit's breath each day. 

Rush to the memory, o'ersweep the soul, 

Burn on the lip, and " teach them how to pray ;" 

From youth to age, from age to death, thus bear 

Heaven's glorious passport, in that "Common Prayer!" 



Circling the Gospel page, it ever moves, 

With all its gathered beauty, Lord, round Thee ; 

Round Thee, its glorious centre, it revolves. 
Thou art its light ! — its life ! — its energy ! 

And balanced by Thy Word, (" Thy Word is truth,") 
through time 

It holds its course unfaltering and sublime. 



l'2-2 LAYS OF A UFETIME. 

(_). when a talse world smiles, — my Praver-book ! — thou 
Art nearer than the world : if 'neath its glare 

My purpose taint, thy page recalls my vow. 
In "Confirmation" registered. — and there 

Sheltered and saved ! I bless the gourd that spi-ung 

A shadow twixt my spirit and its wrong. 



ECHOES OF FOOTSTEPS DEPARTING. 123 



THE CHRISTMAS GREEN. 

" And the ^loiy of Lebanou shall come unto thee, the fir-tree, the pine-tree, 
and the box together, to beautify the place of my Sanctuary." — Isaiah, Ix: 13. 

From the leafless wood we have gathered the pine, 
And the hemlock branch, and the winter vine ; 
And the laurel hath sprung from its frozen sod, 
To wreath in beauty the House of God. 

For this, the fir-tree and box shall wave 
A leafy wing o'er the holy pave ; 
Round the sainted altar the wi'eath shall fall, 
And the holy cross on the hallowed wall. 

For this, the cedar its leaf unfurled, 
And hung in shade o'er an icy world ; 
And we streAV thy path, Saviour I now, 
With the living green and deathless bough. 

'Tis our Hosanna ! a voiceless prayer, 
Feeling, that language can never share ; 
'Tis the silent worship of heart to Thee, 
And this is its bright orthography. 



124 LAYS OF A LIFETIME. 

Death touched our home, and the spirit grieves, 
Its loved have passed with the summer leaves ; 
Yet, brighter thoughts crest the surge of woe, 
Worked white from the turbid depth below. 

A thought of Heaven I a trust in God ! 
The faith that springs from its darkened S(jd ; 
A winter vine, that the storm hath traced ; 
God's autograph on a blighted waste ! 

For this the fir-tree and pine shall wave 
A leafy Aving o'er the holy pave ; 
Round the sainted altar the wreath shall fall, 
And the holy cross on the hallowed wall. 



ECHOES OF FOOTSTEPS DEPARTING. 125 



THE DREAM OF M. F. G. 

I know that the angels are whispering to thee." 

' God bless, me, and make me a good girl."— Amen. 

LiTTLK M.\ry's Prayer. 

Thou art so like a dream of heaven, 

That still thy visions seem, 
Like that phenomenon of sleep, 

A dream within a dream. 
And pure the words that mem'ry brings. 

To noise thy dreaming hour, 
The butterfly has closed its wings 

Upon a lily flower ! 

"God bless me, make me a good girl." — Amen. 

Not such a dream by slumber thrown, 

When grief's rough swell is o'er ; 
The ebb of pain, the after-moan, 

The surge upon the shore. 
Thy prayer is but the echoing 

Of waking peace and love, 
The rustling of the spirit's wing I 

The cooing of its dove ! 



126 LAYS OF A LIFETIME. 

The roses of the Persian field, 

With all their wealth of bloom, 
Are crushed, though thousands may but yield 

A drop of rich perfume ; 
And thus the heart, with feeling rife, 

Is crushed, alas ! by care, 
Yet blest if suffering wring from life 

The ottar drop of prayer. 

Mother ! sweet mother ! thou hast taught 

That infant soul to pray, 
Before a rose-leaf from its thought, 

The world has blown away. 
Prayer on that lip that once was thine I 

Thoughts of thine own a part I 
Dropped jewels from thy spirit's mine, 

Sleep scatters o'er her heart I 
"God bless me, make me a good girl." — Amen. 



ECHOES OF FOOTSTEPS DEPARTING. l^T 



THE ESQUIMAU. 

Recent t.-avdlers in the Polar regions dwell on the almost magical effect of the 
Arctic sunset, and the aurora that takes up the "vrondrous tale," when the sun 
has left the horizon. If we can trust those explorers, the rainbow beauty uf our 
clouds, and the soft blush of an Italian sky, must yield by contrast. 

The Esquimau stood by his ice-piled tent, 

And watched the daylight close, 
Till the lingering sun's last ray was spent, 
And night, with its flashing firmament, 

Glared over his world of snows. 

'Twas a glorious sight! to see day expire, 

As it waned amid flashing showers ; 
For, with winding-sheet of cloud and fire. 
And the iceberg lit for a funeral pyre, 

Passed that day of months not hours. 

Earth was sepulchered ; for, God had hewn 

The ice with His mighty arm ; 
And the wind o'er the marbled snow had thrown 
The drifts like lines on a sculptui-ed stone ; 

Graven by sun and storm. 



128 ■ LAYS OF A LIFETIME. 

Tlie Esi|uimau gazed, and a i;lanco like the pride 

Of thought in his dull eye lav, 
A sparkle throAvn from mind's rushing tide, 
A foam-wreath flung on a rock's dark side. 

For a moment, to melt away. 

'Twas not the snow on its dazzlins: heisriit. 

As it pillowed the dying day : 
'Twas not the glacier's cup of light, 
As it held to the dew-lall a chalice bright. 

Embossed with a living ray. 

'Twas but instinct, lifted, — the tangled shade 

Of a desolate spirit moved : 
As thus his thoughts for an instant played, 
Where sense its dark miasm had laid. 

And passion had only roved : 

•' When morning first looked on the frosty air. 
And turned its snow-dew into gold. 
I tracked my prey to his icy lair. 
And drew from his ebbinii life a «ilare. 
To flash o'er my midnight cold. 

'' When the storm shall come with its lightning plume. 
And snow-feathers fall throu:2:h the night. 
As it flutters its wing in wrath and gloom, 
To scatter its darkness around my home. 
I'll laugh, — tor my lamp burns bright. 

"It burns, when I sleep, and it burns wlien 1 wake ; 
Alike amid toil or repose ; 



ECHOES OF FOOTSTEPS DEPARTING. 129 

And a thousand colors my pale walls take, 
As it touches with beauty each glittering flake, 
That spangles my cabin of snows." 

life ! when the night of age draws nigh, 

With its darkness around thee hurled, 
Canst thou lift the soul by faith on high, 
And win the light of eternity. 

To brighten an icy world? 

And at last, when that Arctic night han come. 

To shadow thee as thou art, 
Hast thou gathered affection to lift its gloom, 
A love to gladden thy lonely home 

With the glow of a kindly heart? 

0, then, to its solitude gently bring 

Such feelings to foliage decay ; 
Some bright little bird that will fold its wing, 
And on life's broken column sweetly sing, 

Though its cornice has fretted away. 
9 



130 LAYS OF A LIFETIME. 



THE MAGDALEN OF CARLO DOLCL 

She wept I the contrite sinner wept 

O'er deed and thought unshriven, 
And conscience, that too long had slept, 

Now trembling turned to heaven. 
She wept ! around, were sin and death 

Her footsteps to betray ; 
Above, the heavy cloud of wrath 

Hung midnight o'er her day. 
God ! Life holds no greater curse, 

Nor greater Death can bring ! 
Than thus to tread Thy universe, 

An miloved, blasted thing. 
To feel, as she, a mind that shrinks 

From all its outer soil, 
Yet doomed to bear the heavy links 

Of guilt's unendinor coil. 

Pass not with scorn such Avanderers by. 

But rather weep and pray, 
Nor lift to heaven the vaunting cry, 
" Thank God ! I'm not as they." 



ECHOES OF FOOTSTEPS DEPARTING. 131 

But rather thank thy God, Avhose care 

From evil sheltered thee, 
And fold thy spirit in a prayer, 

And in humility. 

we have love, and love can fling 

The pebbles from life's road ; 
But what hath she, — poor homeless thing, — 

No Hope, no Friend, nor God ! 
The gentle ones whom Natui'e made 

Alike in form and mien. 
May weep for her, yet weep afraid 

Lest sympathy were sin. 
" Pass on, lone girl ! thy guilty heart 

May blight a purer fame." 
Thus woman's pity chills apart, 

Or icicles as blame. 

The Chaldee, wrapt in visions bright, 

Sees day's last beams expire ; 
And kindling cloud and lofty height, 

Flash forth its funeral p}Te, 
Till stars come forth as pilgrims sage, 

And in the inky skies 
Dip their bright rays, and trace its page 

With varied destinies. 
Read not for her the cloudy leaves 

The winds of sunset turn, 
Not such the fate that starlight Aveaves, 

Nor mortals wish to leara. 

Day brings not peace ; the lofty palm 
Drapes the white-bosomed shore ; 



132 



LAYS OF A LIFETIME. 

But where a feeling high and cahn 

To shadow hers once more ? 
The mom I the ever cheerful morn ! 

May gladden hill and grove ; 
But e'en the daylight seems to scorn 

A thing God could not love. 
And then, at evening's quiet hour, 

When thoughts like dew-drops fall 
On living branch, on drooping flower 

The loved, the scattered, — all, — 
Then mem'ry drew the veil of sin 

From childhood's spotless days. 
And turned from all she might have been. 

To all, alas ! she tvas. 

She wept ! the contrite sinner wept ! 

O'er deed and thought unshriven. 
And conscience, that too long had slept, 

Now trembling turned to Heaven. 
Hope hath gone out ! and life is dark I 

0, what shall light her fear ? 
A tear ! the soul's own diamond spark, 

And Faith that mixed that tear. 
Faith I Faith ! that springs from low delay, 

With pinion broad unfurled, 
And sweeps the golden track of day, 

Unshadowed by a world. 
Above where doubt or sorrows roll. 

With lifted heart and eye, 
0, what can chain the eagle soul 

Whose eyrie is on high ? 



ECHOES OF FOOTSTEPS DEPAKTING. 133 

Saviour ! at Thy feet she strove 

To win a smile fvoiii Heaven ; 
There breathed her praytr, and " God is Love," 

And Mary was forgiven. 
She knelt ! a withered thing, whose blight 

The worm and mildew weaves ; 
She rose ! a flower of love and light. 

With all its folded leaves ! 
Back came the trusting smile of youth, 

And Hope and Feeling too, 
And heart, itself so .filled with truth. 

It thousrht all others true. 
Acain sweet thoughts 'twas hers to think 

From Imiocence that start, — 
Mind's hidden spring, — few know to drink 

So foliaged by the heart. 
And woman's soft and timid blush 

Again around her stole ! 
All radiant ! the dawning flush 

Of a new risen soul. 
Thus pray and weep when Lent's stern horn- 
Turns o'er each leaf of soul ; 
And Conscience, with Almighty power, 

Bends o'er the darkened scroll ; 
And ever hear the voice that saith 

To each repentant soul, 
" woman ! great has been thy faith ! 

Thy faith hath made thee Avhole." 



134 LAYS OF A LIFETIME. 



THE CONFIRMATION. 

" It is an adoration purely of tlie spirit, — 
A more sublime bowing of the soul to God." 

Owen Feltham. 

It is a solemn hour, — the hour of prayer, 
And there arc kneeling at the mercy-seat 

The young of heart, and age with silver hair ; 
And childhood's lisping voices, pure and sweet, 

Join in the anthem that to heaven is swelling. 

While the full spirit trembles in its dwelling. 

And thought has left its earthly resting-place. 
And holds communion with its God in heaven ; 

And there is stealing o'er each youthful face, 

The flush which tells how high the soul has risen 

Not passion's coloring, but the glow that springs 

From feeling in its loftiest wanderings. 

0, what a wreath is woven for the sky ! 

Of bright young beings yet unbowed by care, 
Unbroken hearts for immortality ! 

And lips whose breath is fragrant with a prayer, 



ECHOES OF FOOTSTEPS DEPARTING. 135 

And feelings bound with a. bright chain of thought, 
Which many a joyous, happy bc.ur hatli wrought. 

Life ! will you loavo that calm upon the brow 

And gently pass tlio spirit, moving o'er 
Its brilliant fetters, leaving them as now 

With naught to weep for, nothing to deplore? 
Earth has temptations, and those too may fall, 
The scattered rose-leaves of thy festival. 

pray, ye young ! yc chosen of tlie earth ! 

For ye are pouring at this holy shrine 
Feelings too bright for woe, too pure for mirth ; 

Now worship thy Creator, now, while thine 
Are orisons from unscathed hearts that spring 
Fresh fi'om the soul, ere life is witliering. 

And when the deepened fervor of the cheek 
Shall pale beneath the shadows time will fling; 

And feelings spotless as the snowy flake, 
Melt in the unfathomed depths of suifering ; 

Brightly this hour shall break amid the gloom, 

A star to guide tlie wanderer to his home. 

Thought lifts the past, when at the altar, too, 
I gave a heart to Heaven as warm as thine ; 

Like thine my young lip trembled as "I do" 
Burst from my soul like incense from a slirine ; 

And liopes passed o'er the waters of my eye, 

Bearing glad tidings to eternity. 

Thou' It meet the world to wrap thy brow in grief, 
To pale thy cheek with thought, to gather care, 



136 



LAYS OF A LIFETIME. 



To watch hope's rose-leaf fading, leaf bj leaf, 

And make each heart-string tuneless with a tear ; 
Yet God still claims thee, — pray, — thou art His own. 
Born for His kingdom and an anorel's throne. 

Cling to thy creed ; for, from each soul a chime 

Hath woke the echoes of eternity, 
Though but a moment of revolving time, 

The same almighty finger points to thee, 
Until the Judgment wind life's slackened chain, 
And spirit lips shall breathe thy vows again. '- 

Pray on, and let devotion float o'er life, 
And gather beauty from its changing care, 

A spray- cloud wrought amid its waves of strife. 
Yet touched with all the glory-hues of prayer ; 

Of earth, — though lifted, stretching to the sky, — 

Life — prismed with its Immortality. 



ECHOES OF FOOTSTEPS DEPARTING. 137 



THE LENTEN SABBATH. 

"The way before us lies 
Instinct with signs; thi-ongh which in fixed career, 
As through a zodiac, moves the ritual year 
Of England's Cliurch." 

Wordsworth. 

Touch this dark hour with mercy, Saviour ! shed 
Faith on the soul, God's covenant with Care ; 

And lift those deep affections, that o'ershade 

The heart they spring from ; tinge our lives with prayer, 

The spirit-ray ! 'till feeling, 'neath the glow, 

Wave brightly o'er the life it shadows now. 

Light to o'er-mantle darkness ! for the Shade, 
Is born of Brilliance ; and its power is known, 

Where deep luxuriance of thought has made 
A forest of the mind, a soil o'ergrown 

With its own progeny. Great God ! 'tis Thine, 

To light its shadowy depths with hope divine. 

From the thronged street, and crowded mart, come forth ! 
All as one spirit, penitent, to kneel ; 



138 LAYS OF A LIFETIME. 

God has proclaimed salvation to the earth ! 

A Saviour touched the dying world, to heal ! 
The past is but a ruin ! can ye still 
Plan earthly good above its buried ill? 

Thus Herculaneum, in its ashy shroud 

And marbled beauty, sepulchred fi'om sight ; 

While on the spot where palaces are bowed, 
Another city mounts the lava height ; 

Flings to the fiery air its reckless mirth, 
"And holds its revels o'er an earthquake's birth I" 

Do they not tremble, when they hear the groan 
Of prisoned burnings warring with the night V 

Now, lighting up creation as its own ! 
Then, sinkino; into shade, a dvino; light. 

Within its rocky socket, till it find 

Fresh fuel, to give battle to the wind. 

Do they not tremble ? No ! they turn aside, 
When the light glares upon the sleepy eye ; 

They see no danger in its burning tide ; 

Its wrecks are 'round them, yet they pass them by 

O Saviour ! as our souls like danger share, 

Give to the eye its tear, the lip its prayer. 

But shall prayer enter Heaven? devotion spread 
Its earthly shadow in Thy presence bright? 

Worlds are Thy starry pave I and 'neath Thy tread, 
Night's sullen darkness vibrates into light ! 
"The heavens declare Thy glory!" and shall prayer, 

With all its weiirht of tears find entrance there ? 



ECHOES OF FOOTSTEPS DEPARTING. 139 

What to Thy power is finite joj or grief? 

The heart's lone darkness, or its fitful gleam? 
Humbly my spirit shrinks, as shrinks the leaf 

Beneath the fervor of the risen beam ; 
Bends o'er its sepulchi-e, and waits the blast, 
To bear it as a ruin to the past. 

Yet ! Thou hast strewed the earth with golden sands ; 

And Mind is flashing from its cjay to Thee ; 
Deep-bedded 'neath its care, Thy gracious hands 

Spread the rich ore of Immortality : 
Veining oui- life with beauty, and the trust 
Grlimmers immortal from its shroud of dust. 

Mind ! too beautifiil for earth's embrace, 
Here thou mayest hover, but with lifted wing : 

Thy flight is higher than thy dwelling-place ; 
Though for awhile an exile, worshipping. 

Perchance too fondly, things of earth that wear 

The soul's enduring impress, graven there. 

Thou'lt wander with past ages, sack old Rome, 
And tread with pilgrim-steps Egyptian sands, 

Wooing their antique beauty to our home ; 
The loveliness and power of distant lands. 

The glowing canvas, and the sculptured stone. 

By art, life- touched, to cenotaph its own. 

Pause, where the sculptor hath his soul enshrined,'* 
And laid his thought within that Parian tomb ; 

While wandering from that Hades of the mind. 
Expression suns to light the marble's gloom ; 



140 LAYS OF A LIFETIME. 

Feature and feeling, flashing o'er the stone, — 
The written music with the breathing tone. 

These are thy starry thoughts ! yet cannot fill 
Thy firmament of being ; though their ray 

Brighten the horizon of earth, yet still, 

'Tis shadow-darkness, to that cloudless day 

Dawning from God, — the soul's eternal glow ! 

That folds its sunshine 'round an angel's brow. 

Give Heaven thy thoughts. 0, let not life deny 
Its daily praise for all a Saviour won ; 

But, as our rushing moments ripple by. 

Yield from their wave a tribute to the sun, 

A dew-drop for the skies ! a hope, a prayer. 

Drawn from the spirit's depths, to sparkle there. 



ECHOES OF FOOTSTEPS DEPARTING. 141 



CHRISTMAS CHANT OF THE WREATH-GATHERERS. 

FIRST VOICE. 

From lull and from ravine, where Winter breathes free, 

Saviour ! we've gathered a trophy for Thee : 

From rock and from mount, where the laurel had thrown 

Round its hoary temples a victor crown ; 

The branch from the forest, the leaf from the waste. 

The lingering hope of its desolate breast. 

From path and from wood, that the whirlwind had bared, 

We bring to Thee all that the tempest has spared. 

SPIRIT VOICE. 

Bring thy gift to the altar ! and leave it there ;" 
It shall almost wave in the breath of prayer ; 
Thus should' st thou welcome the Holy One, 
And yet there is more thou hast left undone. 

SECOND VOICE. 

From fields where the storm-wind had drifted its showers, 
Like tomb-stones, scattered o'er buried flowers ; 



U-2 



LAYS OF A LIFETIMK. 



AVhero droops the oypross, aud gloomy fii*. 
The epitaph of their sepulchre : 
Clinging like Love to jui adverse fate. 
With beauty to foliage the desolate. 
The deathless brsuieh of the lonely ti-ee. 
Is our Hosauua, G od ! to Thee. 



SPIRIT VOICE. 

Thy gift to the chancel I its clustering shade 

Shall cling to the shrine where the fjutlifiil have pniyed : 

Thus should' St thou vreleome die Holy One, 

And yet there is more thou hast left undone. 

THIRD VOICE. 

In the Trhite-bosomed snow-drift bright vine* were at rest, 
Beautifiil dreams ! of its spotless breast. 
From the sltunbering earth we have bid them arise. 
Aud they gird Thy Courts with their prophecies : 
And each heart can interpret their blissful theme. 
For they point to a Star, like the magi's dream ; 
The vine fh)m the rock, and the moss fn>m its cleft, — 
Saviour I we've brought all the tempest has loft. 

SPIRIT VOICE. 

Yet morel Thy God would have morel from the Soul, — 
That world with the future and past for its pole. 
Where holy feeling and motive high. 
Bend over its poise like a s\m-sowii sky. 



ECHOES OF FOOTSTEPS DEPARTING. 143 

Circling its space, and lighting it still, 
Through the changing solstice of good and ill, 
From the winter of soul that a Saviour hath shared, 
Bring all ! bring all ! that temptation has spared. 

CHORUS. 

blessed Saviour ! we bring to Thee 

The strength that sprung in adversity ; 

The rock for its birth-place, yet brightly it springs, 

And beauteously shadows life's meaner things ; 

Rooted in danger, unwavering and sure. 

In firmness of purpose it rises secure ? 

The power to endure, and the heart that hath dared, 

We bring to Thee all that the tempest has spared. 

SPIRIT VOICE. 

Yet more ! thy God would have more ! bring 

The Faith that grew brightest in suffering ; 

The chastened spirit, yet cheerflil the while, 

The broken heart, and the trusting smile ; 

The " True Vine'"' entwines thee, — for thee He hath cared, — 

And ye are the ^^ Branches'' His Mercy has spared. 

CHORUS. 

Thought of the Godhead ! that Thou should'st be 
Translated in our humanity ! 
Grief walled existence, but Mercy has stole 
The day-beam's joy to the dungeoned soul. 



144 LAYS OF A LIFETmK. 

Through cleft aad through crevice glorv streams bright. 
And dust and shado\r are woven with light : '* 
That light on our spirits, we fear not the tomb. 
Nor heaven nor earth is o'ershadowed with gloom. 



SOLO. 

A leaf in life's forest is touched bv decay. 
But that leaf in a sunbeam is withering away. 

ALL. 

A living Faith spreads oer its perishing sod ! 
Bright thing of the desert I we bring thee to God. 



ECHOEt^ OF FOOTSTEl'tf DEI'AUTINO. 145 



DEATH. 

"From Dcjitli the soul driiw.s l);ifk, 

As from u streiiiii in winter, tlioiigli l.lif cliill 

Be but, :i mumeiiL's." 

Manfkkd. 

"Pis hai-(l in youth to die, 

When life is heautifu] ; withdraw the trust, 
And bid the heart unchxsp each human tie, 

And yield itself to dust. 

God gave the- germ to earth, 

The soul, transplanted from its home on high. 
And thouglit and feeling as bright leaves put forth, 

And as bright leaves to die. 

Come, Death ! when life has climbed 

The Alpine ])ath of years, and on the height 

Feeling grows holy, and each thought sublimed 
As touched with dying light, — 

When time has chilled the tear, 

And the tired heart above its care has risen, 

And earthly sympathies groAvn frigid here, 

Can lose themselves in heaven. 
10 



14<> LAYS OF A LIFETniE. 

For them 'tis gentle strife, — 

The heart's own tremor, or a pa,s^iiig breath. 
Will hurl the atom from the ma&s of life. 

To avalanche in death. 

But fold thv dark«ied wing. 

Lest the Tonng heart beneath its shade grow cold 
Wait till the bloom of lifr is perishing. 

And all its ior is told. 

The heart thai lights our hv^me. 

That storm and darkness but more &ithful prove, 
O, can we yield that bosom to the tomb. 

With all its wealth of love? 

Love! that seolian dMHd 

That takes life's tempest on its trembling string. 
And turns its wrath to music, — hath die word 

In Heav«i no eeboiugt 

Yes : fi\>m die hd^t of time. 

Onward, — forever, shall the feelin j: roll ; 

And fh>m the grave reverberate die chime. 
Through the long age of soul. 

Then, what is it to die. 

If Death but l^igthe^i. do n«>t part the chain: 
Grant us. great God! Thine "wii eteniiry. 

To count its links again. 



VII. 



THE LAST OF ALL. 



The beloved sister, who had been the chosen companion of her 
life, — the same whom she had greeted in her first infant verses, — 
thus records her farewell : 

" I can never forget the last evening that we passed together. 
It was the final link in the chain of golden hours, that, commenc- 
ing in childhood, encircled our lives, ending only with her death. 

" A brilliant fire was burning in the grate ; the curtains drooped 
heavily before the windows, shutting out more closely the external 
world ; a bright lamp was shedding its cheerful light over the room, 
and what to us both was ever a luxury — we were alone. 

" She sat by the fire-side in a large cushioned chair. The folds 
of her Avrapper fell around her still beautiful figure, only adding to 
that native gracefulness of which disease could not rob her. Ilcr 
dark hair, drawn back from her brow, was neatly braided on either 
side, and contrasted beautifully with the white transparent cap be- 
neath which it was gathered. Her little slippered foot rested upon 
a low ottoman, and her right arm was suspended in touching help- 



148 LAYS OF A LIFETIME. 

lessness by her side. Sickness had added delicacy to her com- 
plexion, and a brilliant hectic to her cheek, which in happier days 
was ever too pale. 

"I drew the other footstool towards me, and sat down, — where I 
always did in spirit, — at her feet, and gazed up into that face, then 
to me lovelier and dearer than ever. She looked down smilingly 
upon me, her eyes beaming with affection, and subdued happiness. 

" ' This is delightful,' she said ; ' how I enjoy having you with 
me. And now we will have a little poetry. Did I ever show you 

that beautiful sprig that dear A (her sister) brought me from 

Europe ? It shaded Petrarch's favorite walk, and I have always 
valued it highly. It is here in my desk. No ! keep it, dear. I 
have had it long enough : and here is the last piece that I was 
able to write. It is called 'Words over a Grave.' 

" 'I was quite ill one day when my poor little D came rush- 
ing up to my bed-side, in such a state of excitement, throwing his 
arms around my neck, and sobbing so bitterly that I could not, for 
a long time, discover the cause of his agitation. At last he ex- 
claimed, ' Dear, dear, mother, promise me that you will never, never 
die ! The servants say that I shall soon have no mother !' She 
paused, covering her eyes for a moment with her hand, and then 
went on with a slight trembling in her voice : — ' You know, my 
nights are very wakeful, and that little incident suggested these 
lines. Kee2D them, too, dear : the writing was my last effort,' and 
smiling sadly, as she glanced toward her arm, ' I cannot write 
now.' Then raising her eyes, with their usual thoughtful expres- 
sion, she repeated them, with a pathos that was heart-breaking. But 
as she finished, she turned toward me, and, with the disinterested- 
ness that marked her every action, instantly changed her voice and 
manner ; with a cheerfulness almost amounting to vivacity, adding, 
'And now I will repeat something different to you.' 



THE LAST OF ALL. 149 

" ' Do you know that at niglit, when my suffering.s become acute, 
I can only endure them by throwing my mind upon some subject, 
and in the excitement of composition I ahnost forget how pain is 
racking and tearing this poor casket to pieces. It is singular, to 
feel one's self two such entirely separate beings. My mind seems for 
the time disembodied, — to float above and away from my body.' 

" Then, like the fairy who ' spoke pearls,' she repeated poem 
after poem of unwritten poetry, till, strung upon that little thread 
of time, it was difficult to say which gem was the most beautiful. 
I have sometimes wondered that I did not copy them ; but how 
could I break in upon that tranced, almost sublimated hour, with 
the mere mechanism of thought? 

" Can it be wondered, that as I looked upon that face, lofty with 
its pure and elevated thoughts, radiant with the light of the genius 
within, and full of the spirit of love and adoration, — for her thoughts 
were even worship,— that to my eye, at least, she seemed already al- 
most transfigured. 

"We parted. 'How sweet it is,' she said, 'to think, in this sad 
hour, that, in all our past intercourse, there has never been one 
unkind thought or word between us. * * * And now, my pre- 
cious sister,' she said, as her arm for the last time on earth en- 
circled my neck, and her tears fell upon my face, ' now go. May 
Leaven's richest blessing ever rest upon you : now go, go instm^thj !' 
she said, as if she could bear no more. As the door closed, she 
added solemnly, 'I shall never see her again.' She spoke truly." 

This incident of the two sisters parting thus midway in their 
lives, is clasped, by a touching coincidence, to that of their meeting 
in childhood : then, one of them was found prattling in broken 
words of verse over the cradle of the other ; now, the other sat at 
her feet, and heard her reciting, in the firm tones of faith, the lai-:t 
lay of her departing soul ! 



150 LAYS OF A LIFETIME. 

[ have Init little more to add. The gnawiug tooth of that 
"worm of Nilus" did at last cut 

•' Tliis knot intrinsieate 
Of life." 

and Sophia went that day into Paradise. 

Even tlien she left behind the fragrance of a fond and tender 
thought. Her husband, during all that illness would never leave 
her, preferring to be disturbed at night rather than not rest by her 
side. As her agonies grew day by day more and more excruciat- 
ing, she felt their monition of her approaching end, but only feared 
that she might die in the night, and overwhelm him with the shock 
of finding her gone, while he had been sleeping beside the dead 
body of his wife. 

Shortly after, the pain gradually subsided, but the mistaken kind- 
ness of the physician concealed from those around her its filial in- 
dication. Suspecting it herself, with her old smile she said to him, 

" Dear J , what perfect bliss it is to be free from pain !" As 

he was about to take his usual place beside her, she assigned some 
reason for wishing to be removed to the sofa-bedstead near, if he 
would have it prepared for her. He carried her thither in his arms, 
and watched her till she fell asleep. Several times in the night he 
listened, and heard her quiet breathing. At day-break, she lay 
there still in slumber. He rose as usual and admitted her boy. 
The little fellow went up to her noiselessly, as if he feared to 
waken her ; but, attracted by the happy smile he saw upon her 

lips, he softly touched the hand that lay upon the coverlet. 

^- father I mother is so cold I" 



THE LAST OF ALL. 151 



WORDS OVER A GRAVE. 

Did she suffer long ? yes ! and 'tis best 
To Avipe our tears, when such weary ones rest ; 
Fond hearts watched o'er her, for many a day, 
Lest Hfe's torn petals should fall to their clay : 
But they fell to their clay. 

Did she sorrow to live, when her husband was near? 
There lay 'neath her eyelid an unshed tear ; 
But it trickled not till her boy drew nigh, 
And asked liis pale mother never to die I 

Never to die I 

Did mind flit from her, with Death afar, 
And left it the gate of the grave, ajar? 
While tenantless life, outlined as before. 
Was the shadow f»f mind through that open door? 
Through that fqjen door. 

No ; praise to Jehovah I foi- mercy thus shown, 
The liirht and its shadow at once were withdrawn : 



152 LAY.S OF A LIFETIME. 

Yet she trimmed her faith, ere she went away, 
God grant there was oil in the himp that day, 

In the lamp that day. 

The funeral train like a gulf-stream wound, 
Throuorh the ocean of life that was heaving around : 
In silence it moved, as the wreck it bore, 
Where the grave- stones pebble the church-yard shore. 

The church-yard shore. 

We lingered long by that cold grave side. 
While back to the world swept the funeral tide ; 
Far from the Death-beach it ebbed away, 
Nor missed from its bosom a drop of spray. 

A drop of spray. 

And must dust absorb it ? Ah no ! — if she shone 
Among Christ's jewels, a precious stone, — 
When judgment shall open the grave's rough shell, 
She may lie a pearl, — but we cannot tell, 

We cannot tell. 



NOTES. 

Page 16. 
(li " Wintry days." 
The first years were full of difficulty and diseouragement. 

Page m. 

'2) "Stuttering 'God skin a Roman' with wry faces." 

Allusion to school-boys attempting : - Gods ! can a lioman Senate 
long debate," etc. 

Page .54. 

'3) "But like the sea-shell far removed, 
Love murmurs for its own." 

"And for its birth-place moans, 
As moans the ocean shell."— Hemans. 



154 NOTES. 

Page 73. 

<<) '' Beside our door there lingers one, 
Whose gaze is on the setting sun." 

The scene here, is herself and infant seated on the back piazza of the 
old mansion, looking at the sun sinking behind the range of wood-crowned 

hills far up in the horizon. Standing by her side is Judge , her 

father-iu-law, a tall, elegant old man of the type and school now long 
gone by. As the subsequent allusions in the poem indicate, his career 
had been a distinguished one ; and to this day, as the brilliant orator 
and the jurist, his name is honored and revered in his native State. 



Page 73. 

(5) I' For he is old, and death so near, 
That oft he starts his step to hear." 

" I think it was Fontenelle, who, when an old lady remarked that 
death seemed to have forgotten them, replied, * Hush ! speak softly, or 
he will hear us.' " 



Page 75. 

(6) "True as the willow-wand to find 

The hidden birth-place of the inind." 

Some may not be aware, that a willow-wand borne in the hands of 
persons peculiarly constituted, will indicate by its motions the presence 
of springs of water underground. 



NOTES. 155 

Page 76. 
(7) '' Brother of early life is gone." 

A younger brother of Judge , to whom he was deeply attached, 

and whose talents had created a universal expectation of great future 
eminence. 



Page 104. 

(8) '< jje lived till age had crowned with snows 
His brow; yet, like the Syrian hill, 
Amid the waste of life he rose 

And verdure clasped his bosom still." 

" Clarke, in his travels, mentions these hills as presenting to the eye 
a three-fold aspect : the firsff, sand ; the second, verdure ; and the third. 



Page 118. 

*^' " has my spirit graved a line 
Its angel may record in Heaven." 

■' Pythagoras enforced upon his disciples, that each day should have 
its line, — something to designate their intellectual advancement; and we, 
under the influence of a purer creed, may yet apply the same moral to 
its philosophy." 

Page 119. 

(10) "Wilt thou not smoothe its ruffled wing, 
And guard it lor a brighter morrow?" 

Genesis viii : '.>-l 1. 



15t) NOTES. 

Page 125. 

'"' " God bless me, make me a good girl." — Amen. 

A lovely little child heard murmuring this prayer in her dream, was 
the occasion of these lines. 



Page 136. 

(12) * * * * "for fi-om each soul a chime 
Hath woke the echoes of Eternity." 

The figure in these lines is much finer in an impromptu verse from 
which it was altered and adapted, entitled, " Address of the Old Year 

to the New." 

" Though but a moment in the clock of Time 
The same Almighty Finger points to thee, 

While to the earth I fling my parting chime, 
And give its echo to Eternity, 

Till History shall wind the slackened chain, . 
And strike events on the world's ear a2;ain." 



Page 139. 

t'^) "Pause where the Sculptor has his soul enshrined, 
And liiid his thought wathin that Parian tomb." 

The reader will of course bear in mind, that the sculptor here, is 
dead, and that his spirit, as it were, still wanders '' from that Hades 
of the mind," the sculptured stone. 



NOTES. 157 

Page 144. 

(14) "Through cleft and through crevice glory streams bright, 
And dust and shadow are woven with light." 

"This allusion will be perfectly understood by those who, in a dark- 
ened room, have seen a sunbeam, stealing through a neglected shutter 
or undrawn curtain, and uniting its subtle beauty with the motes float- 
ing in the atmosphere. It may illustrate the entrance of grace into 'the 
soul that sitteth in darkness and the shadow of death;' yet finding ac- 
cess through the imperfection of our nature, and blending with action 
and its motive. 

'Till "dust and shadow" are woven with light.'" 

Note. Such of the above notes as are put within inverted commas, 
were found attached to the poems. 



THE END. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

016 165 389 5 




